like they would never end
i hated my childhood saturdays and sundays. on saturday mid noons, mama whisked me to the only protestant church in our very catholic island for the choir practice. these lasted like they would never end. until evenings.
and on sunday mornings, I had to wake up two hours earlier than my usual seven o'clock rising up time because there was our sunday family devotion at dawn which was a tad longer than our daily ones.
under the eke of the drying kerosene lamp over the kitchen table, mama would ask me to read from my large letter edition bible, passages from psalms (I never remember her asking me to read anything from the next chapter neighbor, proverbs.) she then required me to say anything about what I just read aloud.
this was not the hard part. I always got away by saying that the best way to praise god was to present ourselves, our bodies as living sacrifices to him, holy and acceptable, in reference to an impossbile pauline admonition.
and mama would smile her smile. my mama was this inveterate pauline epistles fanatic.
sweet coconut wine
the hardest part of my childhood sunday rituals was the walk from our house to another house which our local protestant congregation had rented out and converted into a worship center. this ordeal was most hard since we had mang talyo as our neighbor.
mang talyo was the biggest dealer of coconut cider in our island. i can still recall the sweetness of the fresh coconut sap delivered to mang taling's joint when the sun was still half awake.
the young coconut wine would arrive inside huge bamboo pole containers, shaken, agitated and have become more sweet smelling along the way. the sides of the bamboo pole containers, mossed and lichened, glistened like wet organ pipes under the young sun.
and every sunday morning, mang talyo never failed to bum around, bareshirted, in his front yard garage, his belly sticking out, his shorts barely hemming in his heavy behind, the cleavage between his fleshy buttocks bursting out of the back of his shorts, his testicles firmly gripped by the crotch of his undersized shorts.
then he would ogle us, already sweating in our well pressed sunday's best, as we come out of our house. then he would smile at us with his grin, a toothpick sticking out of his gap toothed mouth, and stubble sticking out his pockmarked chin.
i remember the feeling of wanting to rush toward him and gouge his eyes off and hand them to sheik for him to eat so he could no longer smile at mama.
regal, strong, testosterone heavy
sheik was this trembling but inquisitive, dirty ash loam puppy, reeking sweetly of coconut cider who strayed into our patch of sweet potato in the old unpainted house.
mang talyo immediately disowned sheik when we asked him whether he was missing any puppy. he had more than a thousand puppies in their house yet strangely enough, I could never remember hearing some yelping and barking from their house.
without asking me, mama christened this puppy sheik. sheik. I remember the tickle of the rush of air from the roof of my mouth through my two large incisors as I started calling him his name. sheik. sheik
at that time, mama was into this thick book with a back cover picture of an undeniably caucasian guy absurdly wearing at the same time a western suit and an arabian male headgear.
from the start, mama wanted sheik to be sheik-regal, strong and testosterone heavy. she never approved of him neutered even if the local vet promised her that sheik would magically grew ten times bigger after his would be castration.
sheik immediately lorded the new house we moved in, humiliating every other four legged creature that dared trespass the house, his testes proudly dangling between his hind legs. but not on sundays, never on sundays.
dogging it out
just as we would step out of the house, trying as quickly as we could to escape mang talyo's stares, sheik would just whimper and limp after us.
then three houses away, two bigger and meaner dogs would start to gang up on sheik. and he would hide behind my knee socked and my mama's stockinged legs, his balls rushing up toward the safety of his butt and belly. and these bigger dogs would growl and bare their teeth at sheik, snapping at our legs as we got caught between their long standing feud.
almost always, before we could reach the bus terminal, sheik would be completely crushed and would rather get back to our house, his tail safely tucked between his hind legs, than brave it out with us until the sanctuary of our wooden church.
unfortunately, I had to dog it all the way to our church, past about a million houses more, past the looming and lichened many centuries old stone catholic church where mang talyo and other guys like him went on sundays to worship and probably not to smile at each other they way he smiled at mama.
and all throughout this walk, throughout all the sweltering sunday mornings of my childhood, I remember my mother clasping our bibles in her arms tightly, the way the mosses cling to the coconut wine containers, never talking to me as we tiptoed our way over the rim, the slippery rim of this town of mean dogs and smiling men, toward our little church.