Sorry, I Don't Speak, but I Understand
By Arthur Arboleda (San Francisco Bay Area, California)
July 2, 2021
“Bumigay ang puso niya.”
That’s what one of my titas said passing by. It feels so different hearing how my Dad died in another language. My dad did have a heart attack and died, but in Tagalog, it sounds like his heart gave up. And that scares me, thinking that at any time, my heart will give up, just like that.
Anyway, I find it hard to believe my dad needed a heart to survive. I always thought he was operating without one anyways. I actually thought his heart died years ago, and that was justification for him leaving me and my mom when I was just ten. Twelve years later, I’m still pretty damn sore about it.
I haven’t seen his new kids yet, I just haven’t had the time to meet the kids my Dad chose to have over me. I might just be dramatically bitter, but I think I have the right to be. My Dad left me and my mom when I was about ten, probably the worst timing if I’m being god damn honest. He couldn’t wait a couple of more years? He couldn’t have decided to pack his bags a little later? I would’ve understood things a lot better if I was at least 16. He also couldn’t have left when I was too young to remember him? You can’t leave a ten-year-old, they won’t understand what they did wrong.
Years later, I still don’t understand what I did wrong. I mean look at me, I’m 22-years-old and I still can’t tie a damn tie. I’ve been struggling with getting the knot right, but I keep getting lost close to the end, and I can’t remember what the Youtube video told me to do.
Thinking I can have another go at it, I start walking to the bathroom, hand clutching onto the 5 dollar tie I bought just for this occasion. That’s when Tito Rui appears in front of me as family members often do. Appearing, disappearing, just a bunch of family magic tricks that my Dad’s side of the family is really good at.
Unfortunately, one of the skills you learn when attending these gatherings is how to pretend to be glad to see someone.
“Uncle Rui! It’s been so long, I missed you.” My first lie of the night.
“Gabe, you’ve grown so much, I’m so glad you could’ve made it,” he says, bringing me in for a hug. His grasp has a devastating kind of gravity to it, and I’m forced to hug him whether I really wanted to or not.
He lets go and puts a hand on my shoulder as he towers over me. He looks at me, squinting his eyes, pacing up and down. Or well, just down and up, I’m 5’5. Height wasn’t something my Dad could’ve afforded to give me apparently.
“You look just like him when he was this age, you know that ?”
I scratch the back of my head because I don’t know how to take compliments. So I just scratch the back of my head, hoping to dig out an appropriate response or something like that.
“Really ?” I say, “I wouldn’t really know, we didn’t have any of his family photos with me or mom.”
He frowns and says, “ I’ll see if I can get you a photo or two, you look just like him. You gotta see it.”
I wonder what it’s like, to attend your brother’s funeral, knowing he’s gone forever, and just seeing his mini-me walking around. I wonder if anyone’s even asked him how he’s been doing. I mean, a lot of the sympathy instantly goes to his wife and children, but Arturo wasn’t just a father or a husband, he was a brother too.
“Hey, Tito, how have you been holding up ?”
Tito Rui, like my dad, is quite tall. This man towers at what I think is about 6 feet. I’m not quite sure, I’m 5’5, so everything’s just a lot bigger to me. Even though my uncle is huge, that’s not even mentioning his wild hair. His hair, gray, wild and curly, demands its own space. And his voice, god his voice. His laugh would fill the entire house from what I could remember. I remember going to bed while my dad and him spent the night drinking, and I would feel the vibrations of his laugh through the ceiling and my floor. It always made me want to know what was said that made him laugh that loud.
At this moment, despite his sheer size and presence, I’ve never seen my uncle so small. I mean, what was I doing asking someone how they were doing at a goddamn funeral.
“Don’t worry about me Gabe, I’ll be fine,” he says faking a warm smile, “if anyone needs to be checked up on, it’s with Grace and her kids.”
“I’ll make sure to say hi before I go,” I lied again. I really don’t want to meet the kids my Dad left me to go make. My mom’s mentioned Grace before, but only in quick, brief, painful moments. That’s why I don’t like asking her about them, it sucks out a bit of her every time she does. People just learned to stop telling her things about what her ex-husband was doing, and I think it was for the best.
“Anyways,” my uncle says looking around to end the conversation, “ if you need anything Gabe, please don’t hesitate, alright ?”
Then I remember why I was pacing to the bathroom in the first place. “Actually,” I say as I’m pulling out the embarrassing red dead snake that is my tie, “could you help me out ?”
My uncle stares at the red mess and laughs.
He takes it and gets to work, first wrapping the tie around me, then quickly folding and weaving the tie in and out of itself.
“You know, I didn’t know how to tie one of these either ?” he says, doing a pretty good job if I say so myself.
“And then you watched some Youtube tutorials, right ?”
“No, your Dad always did mine for me,” he laughs.
He’s finishing up now, pulling the tie through its finishing knot. Oh no, it’s too tight.
“I’m actually surprised your Dad never taught you this.”
“Yeah, well that ass never made the time to teach me anything,” I say in my head.
“Yeah, he was just so busy all the time, always working hard,” I actually say.
My uncle takes one last look at me and smiles.
“Ok, Gabe, I gotta get going. I’ll see you later and I’ll call you up when it’s your turn to speak, alright ?”
“Oh yeah, of course, I’m totally ready,” I lie again.
They had asked my mom to say something, but I didn’t think it was best for her to come, knowing how a lot of my titas and titos could get. Chismosa is pretty rabid in our culture, funeral or not.
My uncle quickly hugs me again and gets going to whatever he was faking to end the conversation.
I speed walk to the bathroom, dodging just a handful of people to get in.
The tie is so goddamn tight, but I can’t help but like the way it looks. I try tugging down on the long end, but that only makes it tighter. I reach back onto my collar, dig my fingers under the tie, and try widening it a bit. It loosens just a bit, but still has a grip on me. Did my uncle tie the knot wrong? Or did he just do it right, and my Dad’s knots suck.
My phone starts ringing, so I put off fixing the tie for now. I pull out my phone and it’s my mom calling me. I slide the icon to the left and I walk into one of the stalls, lock the door, and slump down onto the toilet.
“Nak?” Mom asks, “you there?
“Yeah yeah, nay, I’m fine, what's up ?”
“I just wanted to check in on you since I dropped you off.”
I laugh a bit because that was just 30 minutes ago, but I have to appreciate the sentiment.
“I mean, I just got here, but thanks for checking in.”
Mom is someone who always learns from everything. I don’t mean just school either, she’s the kind of person that learns in order to survive. When she immigrated here by herself, she learned what she needed to in order to survive. When she fell in love with Arturo, she learned from him without him really teaching anything to her, she learned to love his quietness and learned to cherish whatever he gave her, no matter how small. When she had me, she learned how to be a mother, not just because she had to, but because she loved me. When Dad left, she had to learn how to survive again, for her and for me. But now he’s dead, I’m not sure what she has to learn from this, but knowing her, she’ll survive, just like she always has.
“Nak,” she says, more concerned, “it’s not too late for me to pick you up if you don’t want to be there anymore.
I laugh and look around a bit, self-conscious because no one should be laughing at a funeral. “Nay, don’t worry. I’m just going to fake some speech, show everyone we’re doing fine, and then you can pick me up. ”
My mom sighs, “sige na, mag ingat lang.”
I’m not sure what I have to be careful of at a funeral.
“Alright nay, I’ll call you later when we’re done okay ?”
‘Kay, Gabe, mahal kita,” she says.
“Alright, I love you too, nay,” I say in English because I’m not used to saying it to her in Tagalog. I’m not sure why, but it just seems different saying it in Tagalog.
The screen goes to black and I’m alone again.
I open up the notes app on my phone and start typing. I’m pretty comfortable with writing so this should be pretty easy. I’m not the best at technical writing, but I do a lot of creative writing. I don’t think I have to make it very long anyways, eulogies are usually short. Just go up, have a small cry, say some soft words, say my goodbyes, and get picked up by mom. Easy.
The best thing about being a fiction writer is that I can make shit up pretty well.
“My father was a good man. Although he left me halfway, the seeds he planted in my life grew into lifelong lessons. He taught me to be respectable, thoughtful, and hard working.
Although he left somewhere between then and now, his small chapter in my life
was a formable one. I’ll never forget the things, my dad taught me...”
I trail off as I try thinking of the things my Dad has taught me. If the tie thing was proof of anything, it’s that my Dad wasn’t really here, and when he was it wasn’t the best. Oh wait, there was the time I learned how to ride a bike. Classic father and son story. We were at our apartment still, and I remember him coming home with the bike. I remember being really happy until my mom and dad started yelling. I remember him yelling, “I got him the fucking bike, what else do you want ?” I remember... he didn’t teach me how to ride it at all. I remember a neighbor my age coming out of his apartment with his bike. I remember him walking me to the basketball courts nearby so he can teach me.
I look at what I’ve written, that already small paragraph, and delete that last sentence. Then I stare at that little cursor, blinking back and forth, realizing that I’m breathing as fast as it’s coming in and out. It feels like I might be having a panic attack, I don’t know, I’ve never really had one before. I’ll just go outside and eat a bit, it’s probably that.
I pocket my phone and head outside. I’m pacing towards the table with food. Logically, I just need some food to get the brain working, then I can get some bullshit words out. There are a lot more people in the building now than before. Everyone’s greeting each other and it’s a whole bunch of people I don’t know. This also means I’m bound to talk to someone I don’t want to.
I find the table with food, but there’s a god damn line to get to it. I could just wait it out. I decide to wait in line, they can’t start the eulogies until everyone’s settled in right. I’m looking around for people I need to be avoiding as I don’t want to start any unnecessary conversations. There’s a small list of titas and titos I avoid, and thankfully I haven’t seen much of them since Dad left. It wouldn’t be good for me or my anxiety if I ran into a conversation I don’t want to have.
That’s when I spot the bar across the room. No line. Some liquid courage could really get the brain going. Or it could honestly just screw me up even more. No, the best and most responsible thing to do is wait for food and type something out while I’m waiting in line.
Then the baby in front of me grabs my attention. With her mom unaware, she’s totally fixated on me, smiling. I love kids, so I make a super pouty face back at her. Oh, she absolutely loves it. She’s clapping and laughing, so I keep going. I make other faces that I’m sure my other relatives made to me, probably ingrained somewhere in there. Then I start doing small dance moves. Oh jeez, this baby probably doesn’t even know what dancing is, and I’m blowing her mind. If this wasn’t a funeral, I swear I’d be the life of the party.
Then she starts reaching for me, in the cute little way that babies think they’re huge. Not wanting to invade the mom’s personal space, I stay my distance, but I wave to the baby. Now she’s really trying to reach for me, and I try making more faces to calm her down. Then she points at me.
“Daddy!” she says to my horror.
The funny faces are gone.
“It’s Daddy,” she says again, getting the attention of her mother.
Then my absolute fears are confirmed when the mom turns.
“Oh my god, Gabe! There you are.”
It’s her. The woman my Dad left us for, Grace.
She looks like how my mom looked when dad left. I don’t mean that in the way of looking alike, if anything, this woman is the opposite of how my mother looks. She’s considerably taller, less petite, long wavy hair, adding to her frame. But her eyes looked like my mother’s when Dad left. I can recognize what the nights of crying can do to someone’s eyes. I push down the shock in order to reply properly.
“Hello, Grace. You look great today.”
“Thank you, Gabriel, but we don’t need to lie today.”
Shocked by this, my mouth leans open, not knowing how to reply.
“I know I look like an absolute mess, but I thank you for being kind,” she says almost warmly.
She looks me up and down, well, uhm, since I’m shorter, she just looks down and up. Recognizing that gesture from my uncle Rui, I already know what she’s going to say.
“My god, you really do look like your father don’t you?”
“Thanks, I’ve been hearing that a lot today...”
She faces her child to me, gently grasps her wrist with two fingers, and waves to me.
“Say hi to your uncle Gabe,” she says in a delicate and soft voice. The baby's eyes light up in a way that’s contagious, thankfully adding some breathing room in an otherwise awkward situation. But in all honesty, meeting the other woman wasn’t so bad. She’s at least kind to me.
“Now she knows two people named Gabe.”
The wind is almost knocked out of me. What does she mean by two Gabes? Is there some long distant cousin I haven’t met yet?
“I’m sorry,” I start, “what do you mean two Gabes ?”
She looks confused at first as if I was supposed to know this by now, but then the sorry look after realizing something washes over her.
“I’m so sorry, I thought the news would just pass over to you. I’m surprised your mom never told you.” She points over to a table filled with people. I can’t see what I’m supposed to be looking at but then I find him. It’s the same messy hair that confirms it for me. That’s my other half-sibling.
“He named our first son Gabriel,” she says so casually. So damn casually. My whole body tenses from hearing this. I can feel my tear ducts getting warm, but I fight back the sensation to cry. No way, I’m fucking crying at his funeral.
“I’m so sorry, but I need to go get something really quick, but it was very nice meeting you,” I say as I lose count of how many lies I’ve told today. I turn and start walking, but I turn around really quickly to ask one last thing.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t even get her name,” I say, grabbing her hand with two fingers.
“Well, he named Gabe, so I named her Denise.”
I smile at Anne, then at Denise.
“It was very nice meeting you too, Denise.”
The baby smiles back at me, probably not knowing how much pain her and her brother’s existence cause me. But it’s not their fault. I give another faint wave to her before turning away.
I start walking over to the bar across the room. It’s a lot harder to maneuver around because the room has finally filled up. People are starting to take their seats with their food. They might start at any moment.
I’m greeted by the bartender, who honestly could be the only person here who doesn’t care what’s happening right now. I wonder how you get a job for something like this? Bartender for a funeral?
“You guys got tequila ?” I ask, getting to the point.
“Yeah, but only well.”
“Yeah, that's fine, can I get a double neat, please ?”
The tiny glass is quickly prepped in front of me and he begins pouring. I know this isn’t the best thing to do right now, but what would be? I pull out my phone again to try and type any kind of bullshit my mind comes up with. I just need something acceptable and I’m fine. My finger hovers on top of the keyboard, ready to send, well all of a sudden, my uncle’s voice, Rui, gains everyone’s attention.
“Mga kaibigan at pamilya! Thank you for coming to celebrate my brother’s life. Nice to see a whole lot of you were able to make it, now let’s please make it to our seats so we can start honoring my brother.”
I forget about writing anything down, and instinctively, I don’t like being wasteful, so I quickly down the two shots of tequila. I slam the shot glass down, wipe my lips a bit, and find a seat.
I don’t know who I’m sitting next to, I just made it a point to not sit next to Grace. I look to my left, old relative probably. I look to my right, same thing. If I could sit next to anyone, I probably would’ve sat next to uncle Rui, but he’s up there, running this thing.
Fittingly, he’s the first to go. The small hurt uncle I was talking to just minutes ago is gone. He talks about his favorite moments with Dad. He talks about how easy he was to talk to, and I have a hard time believing that. My Dad barely spoke to me, his own son. I spend most of Rui’s speech really trying to imagine my Dad being kind and attentive like he’s describing him. I search my memory banks for brief instances, zephyrs of when my Dad was anything close to what Rui is describing. Rui starts to cry a little, but in a way that is almost expected of everyone when someone they know dies, just a little bit, enough to show tears.
Rui returns to the podium on the side and starts addressing the next couple of speakers.
I don’t know who some of these people are, but these guys are bullshit. This skinny-looking guy with his hair parted down the middle claims to be one of my Dad’s closest friends. First of all, my Dad didn’t have friends, he had people of interest. Two, he said the same thing Rui said about my Dad. He went on about how kind he was, how selflessness was so important to him. Is everyone forgetting that the kid he abandoned at age 10 is sitting right here?
Two more people go up to speak, but I tune them out. I’m having a bit of a hard time keeping focus. I don’t really think a double shot is enough to get me faded this fast, but I remembered I totally didn’t eat. I use my hand to wipe my forehead and realize I’m sweating. I only start sweating when I’m drinking if I have a bad reaction to the alcohol. It’s not a crazy allergic reaction, I just have a harder time keeping my breathing under control and I do get really red. I pull out my phone to check how red I am on my camera, but when I unlock my phone I realize I don’t really have anything to say. I start typing more but then I hear my name called up next.
In a sweaty and panicked motion, my head jerks up to see they’ve called the OTHER Gabe. This is the first time I’ve been able to get a good look at him. He looks like he’s about ten and has messy curly hair, but other than that, he looks nothing like Dad. He looks nothing like me, but we have the same name, given by the same asshole Dad. Maybe after this funeral, we can connect and bond over our mutual trauma over our neglectful Dads. This Gabe looks like he’s about to cry, and I’m just imagining all of the horrible things he must’ve endured with our Dad.
Before he can even say a word, he’s sobbing. Other than that, the room is dead quiet and we’re sitting uncomfortably with the sounds of a wailing 13-year-old boy moving in between all of us.
“Mahal na mahal ko ang tatay ko,” Gabriel says through his tears. Just like that, he says he loved our Dad in Tagalog, something I never even thought about saying. When was the last time I’ve told anyone I loved them, in Tagalog nonetheless?
Gabriel composes himself and starts his obituary.
And I can’t understand a thing. I don’t know if he’s talking too fast, or because the alcohol is making it hard to focus, but everything he says is a blur and I can’t understand a thing.
I know he starts telling a story about him and Dad because his tone and mannerisms changed. He’s setting the story up and finishes it up with what I can imagine as a punchline because everyone laughs at the end.
I’m sitting in the middle of a joke that I don’t understand, but somehow I feel like everyone’s laughing at me. My face starts to feel warm, it could be because of the alcohol, or embarrassment, maybe even both.
Gabriel sits down, and Rui motions for me to come up next. Really? They’re having both of us go back to back after another?
I quickly get up and I’m bombarded by dozens of pairs of eyes, belonging to people I don’t know.
I pull out my phone and read what I was able to get down and hopefully I can just freestyle the rest. Immediately I can feel judged for having my obituary for my Dad written on my phone instead of memorizing it like everyone else. Not only that, but I’m not going to say any of this in Tagalog. I know they’re going to start whispering to each other once I start speaking. They’ll say things like, “Oh what a shame this kid never learned Tagalog. Maybe he’s not even really his son.”
The tie that Rui did earlier starts choking me a bit more. It feels like it’s gotten tighter somehow. It’s really getting harder for me to get breaths in. The faster I finish this, the sooner I can get this damn tie off.
“Hi, if you guys don’t know me, I am also Gabe,” I say, awkwardly waving hello. I don’t get a response. I was hoping someone would have laughed because it’s hilarious that our Dad had to recycle our names. I know if this wasn’t a funeral I’d be laughing my ass off at this.
“I can’t believe our Dad gave us the same names,” I laugh while pointing to the second Gabe. “I mean, can you imagine how hard of a time Dad probably would’ve had separating us two ?”
That one actually gets a laugh from someone all the way in the corner and it actually makes me feel better, so I keep going.
“I mean, it’s not like Dad actually came to see me after he left, so that wouldn’t really have been a problem, huh.”
I hear a gasp instead of a laugh this time, and I don’t think that was a good thing to say. So I just start reading what I wrote.
“My father was a good man,” I say way too sarcastically than I mean to. “Although he left me at around 10 years old, at least the other Gabe was able to get 3 extra years from him."
Oh, I probably shouldn’t have said that. People are giving me angry stares, some of them motioning for me to sit back down.
Uncle Rui comes beside me and puts his arm on my shoulder again, probably to get me off the podium, but I shake it off.
“Wait, I'm not done. I need to finish it. If I don’t I’ll never be able to say it and he’ll never know.” I don’t know when I started crying, but I am. It’s probably the damn tequila.
“I didn’t know Dad like all of you did. He didn’t take me out on Sunday trips, he didn’t teach me how to tie a tie, and hell, he didn’t teach me how to speak Tagalog either, he didn’t do a lot of things.” This is where I should say something nice in opposition to this sentence, but I don’t think I will.
“And it’s not fucking fair that he left me and my mom and gave everyone else what we should’ve had.”
“Ang bastos!” someone yells from the crowd. I don’t know what that means, so I put the mic close to my mouth, and mockingly repeat it, “ang bastos!” I yell back.
Something huge grabs me from behind and starts walking me to the exit. I’m plopped down once I’m outside and I turn to see it’s Rui. I can’t read him, but I’m pretty sure he’s pissed off. I start to wonder if he’ll punch me for what I just did. I didn’t mean to say all that, I promise.
“THAT WAS NOT OKAY, GABE.”
He’s louder when I’m drunk.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Rui’s face softens just a bit, but then I finish.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get all the great stories everyone else was able to tell. I just got all the shitty ones where he yelled at me, left, and named another kid after me.”
Rui is angry again. “You didn’t know him completely, he’s complicated. He had his problems, but he was a good man.”
I raise an eyebrow to Rui and ask, “Oh yeah, do you have some pictures you have to show me ?”
I quickly turn and start walking off and Rui says nothing else.
I text my mom to come to pick me up at a liquor store nearby because I don’t want to give any of them the chance to yell at me.
I’m sitting on the curb at the liquor store when I see my mom’s car roll-up. I stand up and she slows down in front of me.
I quickly open the door and sit down.
My nay takes one look at me and immediately knows something is wrong. The first thing she does is reach for my tie and take it off. I didn't even realize how much I was holding my breath the whole time.
“Nak, what happened?”
I think about telling her everything that just happened, but I decide to save it for when we get home.
Instead, I reach for my mom's hand and tell her, “Mahal kita.”
She looks at me seriously for a bit and then giggles a little bit.
“What ?!” I laugh along with her.
“It’s okay, nak, we’ll work on your Tagalog.”
She puts the car in drive and before she starts driving home she tells me, “Mahal din kita.”
