"I find that being nice is not always easy. With some people, it's a task that I end up weary. But with him, it is spontaneous."

- From Corazon's Diary

Three months ago...

She passed away and I felt nothing. I should have, I know, but I didn't know her. She was just a name I often heard when my mother was still alive and a name forgotten when she failed to show up at her daughter's wake and funeral in Makati.

My father never spoke of her again and I never questioned as part of a family tradition, 'Never question thy father'.

My grandmother, or Mama as what my mother dearly called her, passed away alone in her home.

Alone. Like how she had been since she cut ties with my mother.

Alone.

My father shared the news while we were having breakfast, of all moments. As respect for the lady, I didn't make any comment on how I felt nothing or how much we had to send for the funeral.

Instead, I asked the more acceptable and courteous question. "What's the plan?" Surely, there had to be one.

My father shrugged his shoulders. "They've had the wake for almost a week now. We'll go for the funeral."

Crossing your fingers was a myth, after all. "We?"

He looked at me, the slit eyes he got from his Chinese heritage free of emotion. I knew he wasn't fond of my grandmother. If he were, I would have known her.

Growing up, the walls in our home were never thick enough. Stories would float to my ears if I pressed them just right and closed my eyes.

My grandparents were the reason why my father had to take his wife to Manila and build a life of his own from scratch. I didn't know about my grandfather whom I had not heard a lot about and had long passed away, but it was easy to conclude that it was my grandmother who never wanted my father for her daughter for a reason. She was the evil queen, the name being whispered by the helpers when they thought I was too young to understand.

When I got older, it was easily determined that we were cut off from my grandparents' life. That's how the story was being told between the helpers who filled the quiet corners of our home with whispered controversies and unwanted opinions. They particularly liked to romanticize the story of how my rich mother fought for my father, a normal orphaned boy; how he in turn built himself up for their dreams so she could regain the same life she sacrificed for him. The same stories were then passed on around the exclusive neighborhood and eventually made a full circle to me through the mouths of my school bus friends, the same ones who were enamored with stories like the classic Romeo and Juliet or one of the many Filipino television dramas of the same theme that their own nannies, the same people who started the stories, would watch every evening during supper.

My father never found out about it, and if he did, he never told anyone, but I once heard my then own nanny, Yaya Sana, berating the others for invading our family's privacy.

I never cared, for why should I? I never met my grandparents. For most of the people in our neighborhood, children and their nannies alike, they were the evil king and queen of my parents' romance. I had the same belief as them, and because of that, I dreamed of the same love like my parents, one that crossed vast oceans and mountains. One that was endless although short-lived. That was until I grew up and realized that kind of love was easily hoped for than stumbled upon.

"We're the only family she had left," my father said, drawing me away back to the present. "It's our responsibility."

Sad to know he was doing it out of responsibility, right? But what else could he say? My father was a man of truth. He would never lie to temporarily ease your pain.

If truth hurts, then find the reason instead of wallowing in it. Learn from it and build a new version of the truth. That was his motto and I lived by it as well.

I cleared my throat and tucked my black locks behind one ear. I nonchalantly asked, "When do you plan to go?"

"We fly tomorrow."

My eyes widened in surprise and I almost choked down my food. "I won't have enough time to settle things in the cafés," I tried to explain.

"You have things running smoothly for the past few months. Your chains can take care of themselves."

That was the end of our conversation.

No tears were shed.

Plans were made faster than eating a spoonful of fried rice and scrambled eggs.

We would be bound to Bacolod City in about twenty-four hours.

🌳🌳🌳

I never thought of packing for a three-day stay in Bacolod until it was 6 o'clock in the evening. Friends from everywhere in Makati kept on pinging messages to my phone, inviting me everywhere there was life in the city.

In the Philippines, Makati is the Big Apple. Lights never go down; people are always on the go. And I loved it. I breathed its toxic air like caffeine every morning, excited for the challenges ahead.

And at night, I'd get drunk within its city lights, hopping from one bar to another to spend as much as I wanted because I deserved it and I earned it.

Meeting men was easy and flirting was a matter of mutual transaction with the right boundaries for safety.

Keeping a relationship was a little challenging, but it gets better if you could learn to reserve more for yourself and give only a spare amount of your time, effort and energy for the partner. Not all men were like my father. Not all of them could love one woman even after her death. And not all women were Stephanie Sy—wise, confident, proud, fun and difficult.

I kept a small circle of very close friends and those I held dear I replied to that evening.

I would not be available until next week so they better find someone else to give life to the party. I had an important business to settle out of town.

Never had I told them I would be going to a completely different place, to a province that speaks another language and to my mother's beloved city I never had the chance to visit.

🌳🌳🌳

We left at three in the morning to escape traffic.

My father was busy checking his phone for e-mails and text messages. I was doing the same. I had to make sure that everything would be going smoothly in my chain of coffee shops, especially the one I just opened two months ago.

When we lined up to check-in for our flight, it dawned on me that I would soon land in a place where everything is different. I had done this multiple times in the past. I had traveled to far flung places both for business and pleasure, but this was the first I noticed things around me while checking in.

Behind me was a woman talking on the phone in Hiligaynon, the local language of Bacolod. She was carrying a large bag made out of straw and an LV satchel, most definitely an imitation.

In front of me was an old man with two large boxes with holes around them and I thought I heard chicken sounds.

Oh my God, I thought. I swear to God, that man had to check-in that box or I'd throw a fit.

I never knew a lot about Bacolod.

I heard stories of the place from my mother, back when she was still lively and healthy, but most of my friends weren't even aware of the place. And from what I gathered from memory, it is a place that produces a lot of sugar—the sugar bowl of the Philippines, as they say.

I only wished that my grandmother maintained her renowned elegant lifestyle until the very end. Her hometown better have stable electricity, internet and air conditioners. And dry, clean tiled bathrooms.

"You grew up in Bacolod, right?" I asked my dad. We decided to stay in a coffee shop as we waited for our flight.

He nodded, his eyes still focused on his phone.

"How come you never talked about it?" I had to make conversation. We still had two hours to waste.

"It's a great place."

"And?"

For a moment I thought he would brush me off and end it right there, but he stopped and lifted his head to look at me. My father, a man who rarely smiled, had that reminiscing look on his face as he said, "I loved it. Your mom and I did."

"And?"

"You know we had to leave for a better life."

I pretended as though I haven't the heard stories. "I thought she had a great life there?"

"She did." He nodded and his face turned grim. "I didn't."

I didn't say another word for a few more minutes.

"What was she like?" I finally asked. I wanted to know. I wanted to know the woman whom my mother loved so much and my father learned to despise in his own way. He might not have told my mother or me, but the snide comments were enough proof.

"Who?" I knew he knew who I was talking about.

"Wawa," I said. My mother had always told me to refer to the woman as Wawa. I didn't know why. I never even used that term for years.

"She was a great woman to many. A great teacher to her students. She loved your mother very much."

No, she didn't, I answered in my mind. She would have been in our lives if she did. "But you hate her, don't you?"

"Not anymore," he said. "I hated her for years. But I'm also thankful to the woman."

I was confused. "Why?"

Dad shrugged. "She drove me to be who I am today."

"How come she never visited us?"

Again, my father shrugged. His slit eyes were hooded with his thick brows. "I don't have any idea. Maybe she didn't want to see me."

"And me?"

He shook his head. "No, she always loved to hear from you. She was just too proud to admit it. She used to call your yaya to ask after you."

"Yaya Sana?" I asked in disbelief. My nanny never told me she had been talking to my grandmother.

"Those two had their own world. I don't even know what they had been talking about. I overheard them talking on the phone one time but that's all."

I nodded. My grandmother was a proud woman. The fact that she never reached out to us all these years was proof enough. She was too proud, she didn't even want to talk to her own granddaughter. Except her nanny. Great.

🌳🌳🌳

I spent the hour-long-or-so flight sleeping on the plane. I had to reserve my energy to face the unknown. I couldn't imagine myself riding through rocky roads, smelling animal dung while surrounded by the sound of another language, one of at least 171 spoken in the Philippines.

My mother tried to teach me Ilonggo or Hiligaynon but after she died, I never used it again. I only used Tagalog, or Filipino, the national language of the country and the one being used in Manila.

Now that I'd thought of it, both my dad and I ceased speaking the language when mom passed. The sweet, sing-song tone of the language reminded me so much of my mother. There even came a time when I didn't want Yaya Sana to speak because she had that inherent accent in her. My father was a great speaker and when he spoke the Tagalog language, you wouldn't get any idea he grew up using a different one. It took me months to get used to not hearing the dialect at home and it helped overcome the longing I had for my mother.

At the final descend, I looked out the window and a slight feeling of dread came to me. There was green everywhere. I had been in enough airports around the world to hope that we would eventually be headed to a city with far better amenities.

By the time we touched down, the Hiligaynon dialect surrounded us as natives took out their phones to call whoever was waiting for them outside. Imagine people talking in a sing-song voice. I remembered my mother talking the way the woman behind me did. Then I realized it didn't hurt anymore. It was just that familiar longing again.

After we collected our luggage and loaded them in the cart, we walked out the glass doors of the small airport. It was quite an honest surprise that the airport looked contemporary—or at least it tried to be, because it was decent enough. When we landed earlier, I knew what I was expecting when we stepped outside. Green. Nothing, but green.

I expected a more rural feel before we landed, conditioned myself for it, actually. But it somehow felt different now that I was standing on its ground. Perhaps it was because there were vehicles of different kinds, ones you would usually see in Manila, lining up to wait for passengers. Bacolod may not be bad, I hopefully thought to myself as I watched one car after another pass by before us as we waited for our ride.

Yaya Sana went back to Bacolod three years ago to take care of her nieces and nephews. And when I saw her climb out of the white van that stopped in front of us, I ran to her and gave her a big hug. Despite what I found out about her secret with my grandmother, she was still one of the few women I truly loved. She was my second mother and most of all she was the only person who knew me well enough to give me a piece of her mind. Even my dad couldn't compete with her, as he often claimed until now.

"Yaya, I missed you," I said with a laugh. "You got... oh my God, how much weight did you put on?"

She laughed heartily and said, "When you get a taste of Bacolod food, you will understand why." She patronized Bacolod cuisine but ironically, she couldn't cook them.

My father greeted her saying, "Sana, I thought the airport is in Bacolod?" He had that frown of confusion on his face.

"They transferred it here in Silay, sir," Yaya Sana explained.

"I wish I understand what you're talking about," I uttered.

"Silay is two cities away from Bacolod," she explained, still talking in Hiligaynon. And then she realized that she was and she covered her mouth. "Sorry," she apologized, looking at me.

I laughed. "It's okay, Yaya. You're free to speak Hiligaynon. I can manage," I said with a wink. I gave her another hug, trying to keep myself from shedding tears. I never realized how much I missed her until I smelled her familiar scent.

"Let's go?" My father asked, speaking in Hiligaynon as well. I was stupefied. I never heard him use the language since my mother died. "Where's the driver?"

At that moment, a tall man came into view and I must say, he didn't look like a driver to me because he was too ruggedly handsome to be one but I assumed he was because he held out his hand to my father. "Welcome to Negros, sir. And condolence," he added.

My father nodded and briefly shook his hand.

My smile faded and my mood changed. I was not used to strangers.

"This is Erik. Erik, meet Stephanie and Sir Carlo."

"Nice to meet you, Miss Sy," he said with a smile, his bristled chin morphing to accommodate the stretch of his lips as he held out his hand. Should I take it? The question passed my mind for a split second before I did what was polite. I extended my hand and slightly brushed his palm, pulling away before he could close his grip around it. I put on my sunglasses and pretended to take interest in the passing car behind him.

I saw the handsome driver and Yaya Sana share a look. She just shrugged and gently pushed him toward our cart.

"That's mine," I said in haste as he started to lift my mustard suitcase out of the cart. "Be careful with it."

"Yes, ma'am!" he said, his playful tone almost mocking. His wide grin made the well-hidden innocent, gullible part of me want to smile back but I held my lips tight. I didn't want him to get the wrong impressions.

I watched as he loaded the rest of our luggage at the back of the van. When he started to walk to circle to the driver side, I said, "The door?" with my eyebrow arched high.

"You serious?" he asked with a scoff, looking at me with a mixture of amusement and disbelief.

Well, no, not really. I could open the damn door myself. I just wanted to be the brat today.

"Don't worry, I got it," Yaya Sana told him as she pulled the door open.

I climbed in and was greeted with the cool air of the air conditioner.

"You're too harsh on him," Yaya Sana whispered after she closed the door, tone berating.

"I am always harsh on people I don't know," I answered, turned to her and smiled. "They have to prove themselves first."

The lady just shook her head.