BTW, Ate is used when you address a girl older than you, Kuya is used when you address a boy older than you, and Nanay is used when you address your mother or an elderly woman.
Nanay Trining was being sick again. She wasn’t always like this, but this time, she had to be rushed to the barangay clinic.
“The doctor said that we had to buy these medicines,” Ate Sheila said, holding a piece of paper back and forth after she went out the doctor’s office. Ate Sheila seemed as if in the verge of crying, and I knew she was just holding it back. Ate Sheila is sixteen years old, and she and her younger brother, Budong, were the first ones to be fostered by Nanay Trining, five years ago when she was still nine and her brother, three. They said Nanay found them wandering near a fast food chain, and kindly took them in.
“How are we going to buy all that?” Kuya Carlo asked. Kuya Carlo is eighteen years old – two years older than Ate Sheila, yet he acts like the younger one. Kuya Carlo was supposed to lead us and mainly solve the problems we had. Instead, he passes them on to Ate Sheila. He just finished second grade, he always reasoned out, unlike Ate Sheila, who finished the fifth grade. Nanay Trining found him at the pier when he was still fourteen years old and decided to foster him.
“Is Nanay going to die, Kuya Niko?” Budong asked, already crying. Since he grew up with Nanay Trining as his mother, he was the closest to her. They seemed to have a special bond that was greater than just a normal bond a biological mother and a child had.
I had to pat his back.
“Of course not,” I mumbled. Although I was the last to be taken in by Nanay Trining, I was still close to her. She acted more of a mother than my real mother did. Nanay found me crying on the park bench the day my real mom left me when I was nine. I’m already twelve now. I know my alphabet, and I can do my sums. I did really well in school back then, but I just couldn’t figure well enough why my real parents abandoned me.
I couldn’t imagine a woman in her fifties raising children who are practically really different. How could she cope with that? Nanay Trining isn’t rich and just raised us by selling fish in the market. She herself was just as poor as we were when she found us, but she had the biggest heart – a heart that couldn’t be full.
We all thought that Nanay Trining was going to live a good and long life because of the good she has done, but here she was – bedridden and didn’t know what problems the four of us, her fostered kids, faced.
“Kidney problems,” Ate Sheila kept on saying since Nanay Trining was diagnosed with a problem in her kidney. “How did she have this?”
Nanay was forced to stay at the clinic for a few days, and all we have to do is pay just a bit for her confinement and her medicine. However, I doubted we could pay all those.
Everyone was in a bad mood the day after. Not only was Nanay not feeling well, we also didn’t have any food left. Nanay always insisted on earning money for our family, and just left the keeping of our shabby house to the four of us. Now that Nanay Trining can’t work, who would?
Ate Sheila kept on blabbering about what we boys should have done, like earning money for us. Kuya Carlo went on arguing about her principles. Budong kept on crying, and I was left at the corner, trying to think on what to do, although I already knew that I couldn’t help that much.
“You are guys,” Ate Sheila reminded us. “Why don’t you, Carlo, sell those fishes at the market? We’d be dead if you people don’t work, you know. Do you hear me?”
“Why wouldn’t you do it, anyway?” Kuya Carlo answered back, after gathering up his courage. “You’re better in selling. What if I don’t give the exact change?”
Ate Sheila heaved an exasperated sigh.
“Figure out a way to keep from starving, then!”
Kuya Carlo slammed the door and went outside to his friends, while Budong and I watched Ate Sheila walk over to the mirror before stepping out the house to join her own friends.
“Are Ate Sheila and Kuya Carlo being bad?” Budong asked me with tears in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” I replied, wiping my own tears. “Maybe they’re just sad, that’s all.”
I didn’t know if Budong got what I said, but he just nodded and wiped the tears from his cheeks. I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for us. If this is what would happen every day? Are we going to survive? Won’t we go back to our normal lives?
The next day was even worse. Ate Sheila woke up late and Kuya Carlo didn’t go home. When I strode to the kitchen, Budong was already there. He was peeking in the old and dirty cupboards for food. Of course, I knew nothing was inside those cupboards, but I knew what Budong felt. It just made us feel hopeful of the possibility that the next time we opened them, food would appear inside. Doing that was suicide. Opening an empty cupboard, when you wanted something inside it was suicide.
“Where’s the food, Niko?” Ate Sheila burst in one of her foul moods.
I shrugged.
“I haven’t eaten as well, Ate,” I answered as polite as I could, careful that I may not irritate her even more.
“What? You mean Carlo didn’t bring some food home?”
“He didn’t come home.”
She banged her fist on the door and gritted her teeth. Instead of comforting her or saying anything to her, I cringed and proceeded to the door. But just then, Kuya Carlo came in.
“Wrong timing,” I whispered to him.
“Wha –”
“Nanay Trining is still sick, and you go off wandering with your friends!” Ate Sheila screeched.
I started to go for the door, but decided to go in our room, instead, and listen to them arguing. That wasn’t the most fun thing to do, I admit, but I did anyway.
“I wasn’t, and –” Kuya Carlo started reasoning out.
“So now you’re saying you’re not? Don’t you know we have nothing to eat?”
This time, Kuya Carlo seemed to fire up.
“Why then? Am I the only one obliged to do the whole work?”
“You’re the eldest here, Carlo. And you’re the guy!”
“Does that mean, now, that you could go on telling me to work for you?”
“Well, aren’t I correct?”
That fight went on and I could barely stand it, so I went to the corner and talked to someone. Somehow, I knew, there was someone else I could talk to about all the things I wanted to talk about. I prayed to God.
“Lord,” I prayed. “Please help us. I don’t want all these things to happen to my family. I don’t want everyone to feel bad and angry. Please guide me on what to do and how to act. Please help me remind them that you are always there for us and you’d help us in all our problems. Thank you Lord. In Jesus name, amen.”
I felt a tap on my arm. It was Budong.
“Ate Sheila is crying. Kuya Carlo hit her,” he stammered.
“Oh, no.”
I went out, fast. In the corner of the messy living room was Ate Sheila. Her curly, black hair stuck to her tear-stained cheeks, but she kept on crying. Kuya Carlo was no longer inside, so I dashed to her side and hugged her. I didn’t quite get it why Kuya hit her, but all I knew was they were pretty mad at each other and I could tell that there was almost no solution to this quarrel.
“What are you going to do?” I managed to ask her.
“I don’t know, Niko,” she sobbed. “Maybe –”
“Apologize?”
“Of course, not! Over my dead body, Niko. You hear?”
I bowed my head down and asked help from God one more time.
“You see, Ate Sheila...”
I told her my points and told her what Jesus would probably do if he were in our place. Nanay Trining told us all about Jesus, but I guess not all of us have understood it truly.
Ate Sheila raised a brow after I suggested the things she could do. I thought she was going to scold me for it, but she smiled faintly after.
“Wow,” she said. “I never realized that you could make me realize something important, Niko.” Then she wiped her eyes, bloodshot from crying.
I felt really happy, as my heart felt as if it was going to burst.
That night, over a bowl of sardines Ate Sheila had gotten us, everything was at peace already. The only problem left, were Nanay Trining’s expenses and our own daily expenses. That was something we really need to plan on.
“I was thinking,” Kuya Carlo said after apologizing to Ate Sheila, “that I could work at the rice dealer to carry their sacks of rice during deliveries and stuff like that. Would that be okay? I’m not good in my sums, you know.”
Ate Sheila grinned as wide as a mango slice.
“Of course! And then, maybe Budong and I could sell the fishes,” she exclaimed in delight. “Would that be fine by you, Budong?”
Budong immediately nodded with a grin, probably thinking of learning addition and more math stuff from her big sister.
Kuya Carlo and Ate Sheila looked at me and smiled.
“What would you want to do, Niko?” they asked me.
I smiled back.
“Anything!”
Presently, we’re working on saving money for Nanay Trining’s health. She isn’t totally healed now, but we all know she’s healing really soon. Budong could do his sums better than I do now. Ate Sheila isn’t acting too bossy now, and Kuya Carlo is offered a scholarship by his employer. Things are really looking up!
Yes, we’re different, I admit. However, that didn’t deprive us from what we wanted to achieve. So, to sum it all up, it isn’t in the similarities that make us successful, but it’s in the differences.
