Hydrophobia: Vignettes on Valenzuela

The word the broadcasters used was "sinalanta." Ergo: "Sinalanta kami ng bagyo." Or: "Sinalanta ng bagyo ang buhay ko." "Sinasalanta ng bagyo ang buhay ko."

Am I exaggerating? We are submerged like a funny little city with amphibious houses. We might as well grow scales all over our calves and webs of scaly skin between our toes. Ever since I could remember, rainy days always brought water into the house. It is only the volume and color of the water that changes with time.

THE BALSA

Some people think it is kind of quaint or cute that we have little rafts to get us across the deep flood. Men from the squatters' area would construct these balsas and push them against the strong current. Ten pesos per passenger. Four passengers maximum. Sometimes I myself think it is funny. I had almost burst into laughter the first time I rode the floating plywood-styrofoam-plastic-bottles contraption. Clad in my high school uniform, I sat on a wobbly plastic chair as I was paraded like the Penafrancia along our street. There was even one instance when I rode a discarded refrigerator with a cute little chair inside of it.

MAKING LUSONG

However, it really is not that funny when there are no rafts and you have to wade across knee-deep and sometimes waist-deep ice-cold water that has dissolved all of the village's sewage, industrial waste and household garbage. My friends have not experienced having shit floating all around them and they just laugh at my stories. It is also not funny when you contact Leptospirosis, a fatal disease that you get when rat piss enters an open wound.

I remember Jeannette Winterson's "The Passion," where Venetian boatmen have webbed feet and could walk on water. I want that.

THE HYDROPHOBIC HOUSE

The house looks very much different now from the way it looked forty years ago. About two storeys are buried beneath our first floor. It all started with a bungalow. Then they had to build a second floor. Then the second floor became the first floor. And so on.

It has always been like this: The flood comes in and we haul our stuff upstairs and onto benches and thick planks of wood attached to the wall. We always try to be prepared, but there is always that crucial thing that gets left on the floor and we only notice it when the tide is starting to rise. The last time it was the washing machine. It was very heavy, and I can only wonder how my Lola and I had managed to lift it with our bare hands. I had not taken a bath for two days and I felt sticky and my toes were wet from the curious annoying moisture inside the rubber boots I wore while I helped with the evacuation.

I wonder how much longer our family could stand living here. I wonder if the cycle would go on yet again for another year -- although it probably would, given our finances. We are not so poor, we could afford to eat heartily more than thrice a day and all my siblings and I still go to school and we have cellphones. But whenever it rains, whenever I could not go to school because of the flood and whenever my toes feel the almost-rotting wood of the last three steps of our staircase soaked overnight in filthy water, I feel poor. I feel wretched and trapped and outraged that something could be done -- we could move to another place -- yet we are doing nothing. We vow to go away once and for all as we watch the flood seep from cracks in corners, creeping up our stairs. As the waters start to rush into the windows, we promise to ourselves and to each other that, next summer, we would find a new home.

But it has always been like this. Summer comes and once more we feel safe and we start putting things closer to the ground. The tables are back on the floor and everything else seems to have lost their hydrophobia. We change our minds about leaving. We are fine.

But then again, really, we are fine.

There is a curious thing that happens when the family is stuck together. Mama says that she loves the rain as she combs my long hair. We laugh heartily at not being able to go to the bathroom. We talk. We eat together -- something that rarely happens on ordinary days. We all lie down in one bed and cuddle close to each other -- malamig e.