■ Jan Andrei Cobey
“Ma, apat na taon na pala ako sa Kulê sa February,” I blurted out during dinner last week. Fuck, that was miscalculated. I instinctively swallowed the food that I was still chewing. This, for her, meant war.
Kulê was probably the worst thing that ever happened to his unico hijo. My academic woes, my nicotine addiction, even my disastrous coming-out-of-the-closet – she blamed it all on Kulê. For all intents and purposes, Kulê was bent on destroying every value and virtue of mine that she worked hard for.
But she wasn’t always like this. When I first joined Kulê back in 2013, my mother was delighted. “Mabuti naman para ‘di ka lang sa dorm mo palagi,” she said back then. I would come home every week bringing her our latest issue, and she would ask, “Alin dito yung gawa mo, ‘nak?” She would keep these issues beneath our sala coffee table, a conversation piece for amigas that drop by.
But one time after an agonizing 4-day presswork, my body finally gave. She came to visit me for I couldn’t make it back home to Bulacan, my fever wouldn’t permit me off the bed. I swear I saw fire, like a hundred burning effigies, in her eyes when it met mine. She probably couldn’t bear the sight of her battered son, tired and sick.
At that moment, I knew she hated Kulê. She despised the institution that I loved. She couldn’t understand why I’m still doing this.
She probably missed the part where I told her I was proud when I see other students picking up the newspaper which pages I laid out. She probably missed the part where I showed her how happy I was.
I argued my case, probably more than a hundred times, with the same solid arguments that she just wouldn’t accept. I’m doing this because this gives me purpose. And I would tell her, I’m doing this because it is what is right, for the marginalized and disenfranchised.
I assumed she would soon realize: she was an active member of the League of Filipino Students during college, at the front lines during rallies being caught by policemen, had experienced the brutality of the Martial Law era, and was born and raised in the grime and grit of the slums in Malate.
Yet she couldn’t understand why I stayed. I couldn’t understand her reasons why.
Now, in this tiny dining table in a house where we could possibly be evicted any minute, we’re ten thousand miles apart*. She was tense, but not as tense as I was.
“Bakit nga ba ‘di ka pa rin nag-uuwi ng bago niyong issue? ‘Di pa rin ba kayo nakakapagprint?” Caught off guard, I slipped out a small sigh and smiled. After four long years and hundreds of seemingly endless arguments, I guess she finally understood. ■
* As the great contemporary poet Rihanna would say
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