After a lapsed of 50 years I can still remember the day when my brother Efren tapped his head with a stone. That late afternoon, I was helping my father repair our dilapidated hearth, a rectangular box of apitong lumber filled with clay soil. The hearth was the heart of the kitchen and all the cooking were done on it. The elevated hearth and the galvanized iron sink were the endmost fixtures in our kitchen with the built-in kitchen cabinet and the banggera at the sides. Firewood, sooty pots and pans and green bananas filled the space under the hearth. Raw foodstuff, condiments, cooked foods and leftovers were stored in the kitchen cabinet. A large clay water jar sat on one end of the banggera, a protruding bamboo counter used in drying and storing plates, glasses and spoons. Toothbrushes, toothpastes, soaps and rubbing stones also found their niche in the banggera and commingled with the ladles, knives and whetstones.
We replaced the rotten lumber and filled up the box with fresh clay. We dug the soil in the backyard, discarding the loamy topsoil, and hauled the filling material in a plastic pail. We were evenly spreading the soil when Efren, who was watching the work with childish curiosity, picked up a roundest chunk no bigger than his fist and tapped it on his head. He did it several times, making a face as he listened to the soft thud from his scalp. Then his face broke into a wide smile and proudly announced that the mysterious object was a stone. My brother’s act of identifying that dirt-covered pebble was quite weird, but at that time I failed to grasp the full significance of his odd behavior. I did not know what father thought but I was sure he took notice for he donned a serious look at my brother.
I was sixteen years old and Efren was four in 1961 when that singular antic of Efren happened at the kitchen. It was years later that I realized that that acts of my brother was a portent of his life story. Gradually, the significance of the stone tapping took shape in his adolescent and adult life. Was his fate predestined? He was conceived when our mother was suffering from tuberculosis. My mother was eventually cured of her pulmonary illness but Efren was born with a physical infirmity. On his second birthday, he still moved around the house by dragging on his bottom and his buttocks thickened with callous due to the constant friction against the lumber floor. He was extremely shy and hid himself from strangers, including the government nurse who regularly came to see him.
If not for our parent’s devotion and sacrifices, Efren might not be able to walk at all. In addition to the daily massage of his weak legs, they regularly brought him to the sea almost two kilometers away, for the sand and salt-water treatment. On the beach, mother would stretched his shriveled legs and bury him waist deep in the sand. The exercise was to stretch out his limp muscles. Progress was slow but eventually he was able to stand up and walk. He was past his second birthday when he acquired the full use of his legs. His education in the art of bipedal locomotion started indoors, gripping his way with the walls, furniture and other upright objects. After a month or so of grappling and wobbling, he was able to walk unafraid and unaided. He graduated running outdoors with his hands flailing in the air like a bird flying for the first time. The year it happened –1960 – was known as the “Year of Africa” since sixteen African nations in that continent gained independence from their European masters.
