When I look up from the garden to the window of my condo on the second floor, I see my cabinet through the flimsy blue curtains. My sister habitually draws them close to protect our privacy, however, the curtains are mere decoration.
I was a bed spacer for many years before I had my own house. I hung curtains in every room or bed I rented immediately after occupying the space. Timeline pictures of the rented abodes reveal the following: In my bed space in Palanan, I hung a green batik over the glass window to guard myself from overexposure. From my loft bed in that tiny room, I could sense the ‘aura’ of anyone who passed by that eskinita any time of day. A wall-to-wall golden-brown curtains draped the concrete wall in my mother’s house in Batangas. In my small house in Cavite, a shell-craft curtain divided the bedroom and living room spaces.
I fondly remember the assorted malong I draped around a space I rented in T-street. Where the kasambahay was lodged and the rest of the 100-sqm-terrace-space a wash area, the owner leased me a corner at a low cost. It was adjacent to the kitchen right next to the back door of the main house. A divider made of concrete stood unfinished around ten feet across this door. Initially, the owner planned to build another room outside the main house but gave up the idea midway. It permanently separated the spare space and the rest of the area for hanging the wash.
With the divider as my x-line, I stacked existing old furniture side by side to form the y-axis of my wall. Then, I tacked the malongs onto those made-up walls to secure the space. A walkway emerged between my curtained nook and the kasambahay’s room. Our ‘main street’ as we joked about it was an arm’s-length wide
Also an open bodega for unused items, the whole place was fenced in by concrete that only went halfway up to the roof. A soft wind blew into the nook at night, so I slept soundly. The area smelled of laundry soap and sun-dried clothes. The smell of food cooking in the kitchen wafted over the space momentarily and whizzed out eventually. Manang had the radio on all day on weekends while she did her chores. CJ, her four-year-old apo, danced and sang, around and about to everybody’s delight.
At the start, Manang and her daughter Lyra made it obvious that I had invaded ‘their’ territory. But we became friends after I allowed them to use my washing machine. 😊 Lyra even insisted on washing my clothes for free!
An incident drove the kasambahay family away. In her many years of stay in that house, Manang confided that she never took a single item from a shelf, cabinet, or closet. Yet the owner of the house accused them of stealing something.
I never doubted Manang’s version of that incident. The owner of that house had always been wary and distant. She was a professor and her husband was a columnist in a major newspaper. They were never home at the same time. Their one and only son was often in his grandmother’s place. Their concrete, well-furnished house was always dark and eerie.
Only a malong served as a door to my room. While we talked, laughed, and bantered like close relatives, the kasambahay family kept it to themselves if they heard me crying. We told each other secrets that never left those quarters.
The kasambahays swept the floor every day and kept it dry during the rainy season. They dusted all surfaces compulsively. They folded my bedding if I left the bed messy at rush hours. They kept my pile of paper in place.
They kept some food for me at night. They opened the main gate even at late hours.
I never lost a single precious object in my room. I always came home from work finding all my things exactly where I left them
