Smaller and Smaller Circles (6 page)

6

After his classes
the next day, Saenz heads back to the NBI. Jake Valdes has arranged for him to sit down and talk with John David's parents.

He waits for them in a small office with dingy cream walls and fluorescent lighting. The chairs have rusty metal legs, and their fatigue-green upholstery is cracked and flaking off in places, exposing the yellow rubber foam underneath it to dust and grime. There are two desks in the room, their cheap wood veneer peeling back in the humidity like shavings of cheese. Saenz has been in countless rooms like this before, all of them ravaged by decades of bureaucratic neglect and systemic inefficiency. They are depressing to be in for any length of time; but somehow, they also harden his resolve.

Someone knocks on the door; it's Ed Borja. “Father
. . .
” he begins, and as he opens the door wider, Saenz sees the Mendozas, small and hesitant in the corridor. Their eyes are puffy, no doubt from crying. No amount of washing can hide the fact that their clothes are old. They are both wearing worn rubber slippers, and Saenz surmises that they are much younger than they actually look, their faces and bodies worn down by hard, unrewarding work, exposure to the elements, constant deprivation.

Saenz stands as Ed leads the couple into the room. He's careful with them, as if they're fragile. They stand together in the middle of the room, leaning toward each other. The man's left shoulder touches the woman's right one, but the corresponding hips don't touch, as though they're used to leaving room there for a child. The sight of that empty space, the knowledge of what is no longer there, tugs at something inside Saenz.

“This is Father Gus,” Ed explains to them. “He wants to ask you a few questions about your son.”

The father looks at Saenz. “But we don't know very much,” he says, a plaintive note in his voice. “We only found out yesterday.”

Saenz quickly moves to position two chairs in front of them, then wordlessly invites them to sit down. “I am here to help. I am hoping to understand how this might have happened to your boy,” he tells them when they've settled uneasily into the chairs. “But to do that, I have to ask you a few questions.” He fishes out a small notebook and a pen from his back pocket.

The father and mother exchange wary glances, then look to Ed, who's now sitting at one of the desks, for cues. With a nod, he prompts them to proceed.

At this, the father speaks again. “What do you want to know?”

“First, when was the last time you saw John David?”

“Jon-jon,” the mother volunteers.

“Jon-jon,” Saenz repeats. “The last time—before he disappeared?”

The couple look at each other again. “It was a Saturday morning,” the man says slowly. “He didn't finish his breakfast. He said he was going to meet some of his friends in Payatas.”

Saenz considers this a moment. “You mean, you don't live in Payatas?”

“We live in Manggahan, with my brother and his family.” Manggahan is one of the nearby
barangays
.

“And Jon-jon's friends—they're from Payatas?”

“We don't know. Maybe. Jon-jon used to go there almost every day.”

“To visit his friends?”

The man shakes his head. “No. To dig through the dump.”

He says it matter-of-factly, but the reality of it stings Saenz: the boy was a scavenger.

“He worked in the dumpsite.”

The man nods. “He collected bottles, scrap metal, anything that he could sell.”

Saenz must choose his words carefully. “Did he go to school?”

“Only up to grade four.” The man touches his wife's hand. “We couldn't afford any more schooling. A few years ago my wife had to stop working because she has a lung condition. I can't hold a regular job because I'm an ex-convict. Nobody wants to hire someone like you. So I do odd jobs here and there—some basic carpentry or plumbing or electrical jobs. But they don't pay very well.”

“I see. So Jon-jon helped with the family expenses?”

“Yes. We depended on his earnings to get by. Often, he would bring food from the dump.”

Saenz's eyes widen. “From the dump?”

“If he couldn't find metal or wood or paper to sell, he would look for food—anything thrown away that could still be used. If it was too spoiled or rotten, he would mix it together for pig slop and sell it. If there were scraps that could still be eaten, he would bring them home. Vegetables, fruit. Moldy bread. Pig fat, animal skin. Bones to make soup.”

Saenz says nothing for a few moments, trying to take this in, and the man tries to fill the awkward silence. “It's still food, you know. We just put it all in a pot and boiled it so that we wouldn't get sick. Most of the time, that's all the food we had.”

Saenz isn't naïve; he's always known that this is the sort of existence that the country's poorest live from day to day. But to hear about it firsthand, told with such apathy and resignation, is a different thing altogether.

“Do you have any other children?”

“Five. Jon-jon was the oldest. He just turned thirteen in January. The rest are too young to work.”

Depended on his earnings. All the food we had. Too young to work.
Saenz does not want to be angry, but he is: not at the hapless parents, who probably could not have done any more for their children under the circumstances, but at everything else.

“Jon-jon's friends—do you know any of them? Can you give me some names?”

Again the father and mother look at each other, trying to remember. But they come up with nothing. “Jon-jon didn't talk about them much. We never met any of them.”

Saenz nods. “Did he get into any fights that you know of? Did he have any problems with anyone?”

“No. He never told us anything. He was always very tired when he came home, you know? Rain or shine, he would go to the dump after breakfast. He only kept away if he was sick or if there was a typhoon.”

“If he didn't go, we didn't eat.” It's the woman talking now, her voice soft and sad. It is as simple and as complicated as that: this family lives hand-to-mouth.
Isang kahig, isang tuka
, one scratch, one peck: a day's work for a day's food.

Saenz has to force himself to put his anger aside, to focus on getting more information. “Did Jon-jon say where exactly he was meeting his friends?”

“No. But he used to go to the parish church there once in a while. He said they gave out free food on Saturdays.”

Ed raises his hand like a schoolboy to catch Saenz's attention. “We can ask around the parish, see if they knew Jon-jon.”

“Yes, Ed. Please do. That would be most helpful.” Saenz glances back at the couple. “Where did Jon-jon sell his goods?”

They pause to think about this, and the mother says, “He and the other waste pickers just went to any of the nearby collection stations along Commonwealth.” Saenz has seen those—filthy, decrepit structures with mounds of scrap metal, and wood, and cardboard, and bins full of discarded bottles.

“Did he have any trouble with anyone there?”

“No. No trouble.” The mother bites her lower lip, thoughtful. She continues: “But he didn't tell us much. He just worked and worked. He didn't complain, but he was always very quiet anyway. He didn't like his cousins, but he couldn't avoid them—we live in a small place, just a shanty, and there are fifteen of us. So he just went to work. It gave him a reason to be out the whole day.”

Saenz leans forward. “He didn't get along with his cousins, then?”

“Just the usual stuff between boys.”

“How old are they?”

The mother seems surprised. “About his age, or younger.”

The father adds, “The oldest is Sonny. He's thirteen.”

Too young
, Saenz thinks,
statistically unlikely to have been involved.

Saenz asks a few more questions about Jon-jon's routine and activities, but the parents can't give him much. Overall, they give him the impression of a family fragmented by poverty, drifting numbly through days and nights of hunger and deprivation. There is love there—he doesn't doubt it; it's in their eyes when they talk about their dead son—but there isn't the full engagement in, or awareness of, the boy's life that might give Saenz the information he needs.

He concludes the interview and rises to his feet. Ed stands too and opens the door, ready to usher the couple out of the room.

“Thank you for coming to talk to me,” Saenz says.

They nod, mumble their thanks and begin to walk to the door. But the mother turns back to face Saenz.

“You're a priest. How can you possibly help us?”

Saenz is momentarily stumped by the question. It would be useless to tell them that he's done this before, that he's been trained to assist in cases like their son's.

It's a humbling question, and one he doesn't have a suitable answer for. “I don't know yet,” he says at last, and it's the truth.

She doesn't look satisfied, but his honesty is enough for now. She nods and follows her husband out to the corridor. Ed smiles at Saenz sympathetically; he knows what it's like to be asked that question and to not know the right thing to say.

When he leaves the room, Saenz notices Ben Arcinas waiting outside the door, a paper cup in his hand.

“Nice answer, Father,” he says, his tone mocking. Then he ambles off down the corridor, seemingly without a care in the world.

W

Saenz1911: You're probably out.

Saenz1911: But the boy's been identified.

Saenz1911: Spoke with the parents today.

Saenz1911: He worked the dump, picking waste.

Saenz1911: He was pretty much the breadwinner of the family. At thirteen.

Saenz1911: Something not very not right in that alone.

Saenz1911: Anyway.

Saenz1911: Will email details.

Saenz1911: Night.

Saenz leans back in his chair and tilts his head up toward the ceiling, hoping to relieve the strain in his neck and shoulder muscles. He slips his feet out of his shoes and then starts to remove his socks using his toes.

He sits in the dark for a minute or so, then decides to get ready for bed and get some sleep. He stands, yawns, stretches his arms and bends from side to side.

Then the chat program pings him.

JLucero: You still there?

JLucero: When I was thirteen, I was in school.

JLucero: I wasn't very happy, but I was in school.

JLucero: Well, you know that.

Jerome had been a high school freshman at thirteen and Saenz a young priest. Their paths crossed first when Saenz had signed up to teach a biology class at Jerome's school while wrapping up his MA at the university. Ferdinand Marcos's martial law had been in place for nearly a year, and Saenz was quietly active in the opposition against him.

Saenz1911: Hey. You're there.

Saenz1911: You had your own cross to bear.

Jerome was one of the quietest boys in Saenz's class. And yet, as his tests and papers would eventually show, he was also one of the brightest. He sat by the windows, and Saenz would often see him staring out at the trees. At other times, he would fall asleep at his desk. He did not have many friends; his parents hardly ever turned up at parent-teacher conferences. Moving about on campus, he tended to keep his head down, avoiding eye contact. He walked with a limp; some days it would be more manifest, and the boy would be, by turns, listless, distracted or easily startled. Saenz knew almost immediately that he came from a troubled home, that he bore the brunt of the trouble in it, and that the limp was not from any congenital condition but had been acquired.

JLucero: Did the parents give you any leads?

Saenz1911: Not much that was useful.

Saenz1911: At least, not useful yet.

Saenz1911: Maybe some of it will make sense down the line.

JLucero: I suspect none of it will make sense however far down the line we go.

Saenz knows this to be true. Even though he's done this many times before—tried to understand the complex interactions between power, poverty and crime in this country—in the end, none of it makes any sense.

Take Jon-jon, for example. He was young and small, just the perfect weight for foraging in the unstable mounds of rubbish. He would have been light on his feet and fast, able to pick through a load of freshly dumped garbage quickly, in constant competition with other trash pickers for the most valuable finds. His life and health would have been in perpetual jeopardy: from rival scavengers, from disease, from infection by medical waste or poisoning by industrial waste, from the toxins produced by the ceaseless ferment of the landfill.

In a different kind of society—a better kind—he would have been in school, would have had a chance to play, would have had better food to eat and cleaner air to breathe. And if he still died the way he eventually did, society's guardians, its authorities and lawmen, would have left no stone unturned to find out who was responsible.