Apoy
Maaaring kathang-isip ang una kong alaala: tinutunaw ng apoy
ang mga kaldero, palanggana, at kawali pagkatapos gawing abo
ang mga dingding. Madali ngang magsahalimaw tuwing Mayo
ang ningas, tulad ng tag-init sa Dadiangas. Nakatutupok
ang daplis pa lamang ng dila, gaya ng maaaring kahantungan
ng duyang kinahihimbingan ng sanggol na ako, isa o mag-iisang
taong (walang) malay. Inililigtas ng hindi ko makilalang babae
ang mga maaari pa. Napigtas na ang mga lubid nang makita niya
ang duyan. Pinabayaan niya ako. Si Papang ang sumagip.
Mga talâ: sa alaala ni Papang, pumalahaw ako nang inihagis
ng babae sa akalang unan lamang ang nasa duyan. Di matiyak
ni Mamang kung paano naligaw pauwi sa kaniyang sariling
tirahan. Abo na lamang ang kaniyang nadatnan. At ako,
iginigiit na umiyak lamang dahil sa pagkahulog. Isang haka:
kaya madali akong lamigin dahil bininyagan sa dagat ng apoy.
Fire
I may have just dreamt up my first memory: fire melting
the pots, washbasins, and frying pans, after reducing to ashes
the walls. How easy it is during May to turn ravenous
as ember, like summers in Dadiangas. Still able to raze down
is a lick of flame, just like the likely fate
of a hammock where I slept as a child, one or barely one
person who is (not) conscious. A woman I have no way of recognizing saved
everything that was salvageable. The ropes had already broken off when at last she saw
the hammock. She left me behind. It was Papang who saved me.
Notes: in Papang’s memory, I was wailing when I was flung
by a woman onto what she had mistakenly thought was a pillow in a hammock.
Mamang could not grasp the idea of losing her way
home. Ashes were all that’s left of her home. As for me,
there was an insistence that I was sobbing only because of a bad fall. A theory:
I chill easily because I have been baptized in the sea of fire.
Author M.J. Cagumbay Tumamac is a writer and reading advocate from southern Mindanao, Philippines.
Translator Kristine Ong Muslim’s translation work has been widely published, including in The Cincinnati Review, Columbia Review, LIT Magazine, Sou’wester, as well as in four bilingual editions: Marlon Hacla’s Melismas (forthcoming from Oomph Press) and Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles’s Walang Halong Biro (De La Salle University Publishing House, 2018), Hollow (forthcoming from Fernwood Press), and Three Books (forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books). Her most recent translation of M.J. Cagumbay Tumamac’s work has appeared in Words without Borders.