EVANESCENCE

Walter's Tales

by Regg Canarias

I. The Ghastly Ghost

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My first set of stories was written in thin air—my older brother, Walter, was my first audience. We were each other’s first co-authors. For a child who grew up in poverty only having to watch television from the house next door, my brother had the wildest imagination. Together with the playful mind of a six-year-old, Walter and I painted stories in our heads in the desert-like streets of Torres under the scorching heat of the sun. While my father had to sell e-loads, cigarettes, and candies to the call center agents nearby, my brother and I entertained ourselves with the tales of our imaginary friends. 

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Everything began with Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy—we could’ve come up with better names for our cannot-be-seen companions, but Yaki, the sour bubble gum, was a trend at the time; my brother loved pork chop which was a limited edition viand in our household, and I’ve had always loved dogs and puppies. Besides, I was six and he was eight. But for kids at those ages, I played a 

little too much and my brother too little. While my favorite thing to do was catching small dragonflies near the stinking drainage, my brother was exercising his imagination with books. At that time, for an introverted young boy, he had been exposed to various reading materials, including our great-grandfather’s copy of Reader’s Digest. On the afternoons when he wouldn’t play with me, it was as if he preferred his books over his sister. 

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But Walter would give me his full attention every time I asked him about Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy. His stories kept me occupied during the rainy days in our father’s sari-sari store. Sometimes, when the trip back to our house was taking too long because of the traffic, Walter and I would take turns telling stories about our three friends. Other passengers would look at us like we were insane, but I didn’t mind. What mattered was how Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy endured the traffic in a packed Route 11 jeepney. 

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It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that my brother was a gifted kid. While I was often conscious of how the other passengers looked at us because of our public story-telling exhibition, Walter didn’t mind. It was a language that only the two of us spoke, a union of our imagination through the adventures of the three non-existent characters. When our parents separated in 2012, it was Walter’s tales of Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy that kept the house from succumbing to total quietness. It was in the same year that my brother joined his first Division Schools Press Conference as a sports writer in Filipino where he placed first. By then, our broken family knew that Walter had a way with words. 

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After my brother finished sixth grade, he enrolled in a Special Program in Journalism at the Davao City National High School (DCNHS), where he became the Editor-in-Chief of the Filipino school publication for three years. Meanwhile, I started writing my first short story entitled “Let Me Be The One” in a big blue notebook with a design that says “HOPE: Hold On, Pain Ends,” which ended up being eaten by my pet dog Buchok. There were no traces of the first character I murdered and the first couple whose lives I have ruined. After that, I ventured into poetry inspired by songs. The ten-year-old me thought of my writing as a reply to the lyrics. Whenever one of my classmates was able to secure an e-book of a Wattpad story, the copy spread like wildfire. If I wasn’t listening to music or writing poems, I was reading e-books. 

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My “Wattpad era” ended when I had to face the inevitable. For most of my life, I had the same teachers as my brother because I decided to follow the same path that he took—entering the first section, joining quiz bees, and even competing in journalism. Despite not having a facial resemblance growing up, my teachers expected me to be as smart as Walter.  None of them saw me as a different person—I was a lousy ghost, the ghastly option they had to consider because they hoped that I shared a portion of my brother’s intelligence. When I entered sixth grade, I also competed for the Division Schools Press Conference, but I wasn’t able to proceed to the regional level, as my team failed to secure first place. While I was drowning in my tears in the house we rented, my brother in DCNHS was floating in adoration, especially since he was chosen to be the next Editor-in-Chief. 

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Walter’s ways with words were not merely from books—they were also from our mother. While my brother created stories to keep me occupied and to entertain himself, Mama’s words were intended for stabbing. It wasn’t long after her separation from Papa that she started comparing me to Walter, and how much of a better child he was. Walter’s tales may be longer, but the chorus of my mother’s song lingered. I enrolled in the Special Program in Journalism at the same school to avenge myself for my mother’s favoritism. I didn’t want to be like my brother. I aimed to be better than him. 

II. The Sulking Spirit 

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My brother wouldn’t speak to me whenever we saw each other in the hallways of City High. The distance between us was farther than where Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy wandered. We no longer speak of them. In fact, Walter and I stopped talking to each other. No high school teenager would want to have his younger sister following him around to start petty competitions, like an unsettled spirit who never got their peace. So he began ignoring me. Sulking was my response to Walter’s cold shoulder. During the rarest moments when we spoke to each other, there were words carved in stones flying from across the room we shared in my late maternal grandmother’s house—the refuge that sheltered us after our mother left us for good. 

Walter and I used to come home from school together. But high school was different: he and his friends were making a legacy in journalism competitions, while I only began writing my story as a student leader. I was no longer identified as his younger sister, but I was a person of my own. As we grew closer to our passion, we drifted farther to the point that we rarely spoke to each other, only when Lola or Papa was around. We were at the same high school for six years, but we never traveled home together. Not even once. 

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Though we moved to my grandmother’s house, her home is in the same barangay as the apartment that our family once lived in. The traffic had gotten worse over the years. Sometimes, I would ride the tricycle with my classmates who also lived in R. Castillo. But on the days when I had to go home all alone, I would find myself writing poems on the notes app on my phone. My words filled the holes that my brother’s absence created. The traffic was tormenting, and Walter wasn’t there anymore to tell me tales of Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy. 

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In my desperation to avenge myself for a conflict that he didn’t cause, I turned him into my enemy—an excruciating truth I wasn’t able to confront until I had to trace the roots of how I got into writing. 

III. A Memorabilia by the Monster

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Three months after my grandmother passed away, the pandemic jailed us in the place I used to call home. I was stuck with a grumpy bedridden grandfather and a brother who only spoke to us in yelling—perhaps at least, he talked to me again? On most days, I couldn’t endure the darkness of our home after Lola had a heart attack, but I couldn’t write about it either. The pandemic fried my brain, like it did Walter’s. The screaming matches between him and me continued until he accidentally steamed Tender Juicy hotdogs, still with its plastic peel, that we spoke in laughter once again. There was no name-calling nor mindless blaming. Only a 19- and a 17-year-old who were laughing their asses off over their first decent dish, after consuming all the sardines from the quarantine relief goods. 

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While stuck at home, Walter had been rereading some of the books he collected before the pandemic. He kept more than a dozen books and Marvel comics in his cabinet. After he indulged in the trend of dating apps, he wrote an essay about Tinder, entitled, “The Tinder Experience: An Unfiltered Review on Modern Dating.” Although he never published the narrative online, he proudly shared his sentiments with me, Papa, and his friends. Reading Walter’s works showed a different side of him. I got a glimpse of the humorous version of my brother that I didn’t see growing up. We could’ve been best friends. 

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From his collection of classics, the only book that I borrowed from Walter was his copy of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, published by Aladdin Classics in 1999. And there wasn’t a day that passed that he didn’t remind me to return his book. We had already moved to a smaller room in Bajada when I returned the book. Walter told me to put it back in his sock cabinet, where I saw the congratulatory letter that I gave him on his elementary graduation day. He was sleeping soundly on the lower deck of the bed we shared, while I exhausted all the strength that I had to not bawl my eyes out. My handwriting was too sloppy for a ten-year-old. I didn’t have any metaphors worthy of preserving. All these years, while Walter safely kept the letter that I gave him, I kept on holding grudges against him. The message that I wrote to him was probably the last time that I said something nice to my brother, reminding me of who I had become—a monster who fed on the satisfaction of beating someone of their own blood. 

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If I had to retell all the tales of Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy, I wouldn’t remember the details. But I will never forget Walter’s enthusiasm in telling all the stories. My brother had a stutter problem as a child, but when he told me stories, he spoke as if millions of children were looking at him, waiting for what would happen next to the imaginary friends we created together. He would take the time to answer my questions, cater to my giddy mind, and even consider my suggestion on where Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy should go for their next adventure. Walter poured his heart into crafting stories, all for his sister—the very same monster who despised him for his excellence. 

IV. The Devil’s Demise

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Walter colored my mind in different hues when he decided to work in a BPO Company. His pasalubong from work were the stories of the clients he encountered, and how much the city was changing to the new normal. He had to work a night shift as a newbie, so his stories were a series that I looked forward to every morning. As a minor during the quarantine living in the downtown area of Davao City, I almost forgot what the outside of our apartment looked like. I was fortunate enough that the best storyteller I know comes home to me every day, painting images of the outside world with his words. 

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In the first story that I wrote for my realist fiction class at UP Mindanao, I drew inspiration from my brother in writing the antagonist. The stories I told during my teenage years featured him as the villain. It was under my nose the whole time that I was the real enemy. Walter was always the bad guy, so I didn’t notice that I was slowly dethroning Satan. The rift that I caused was a living hell that he had to endure only because I wanted our estranged mother’s futile approval.

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While I found comfort in writing about my family, I never wrote about my brother before. After I published my memoir about our father in 2021, Walter subtly asked me when I would write about him, each time a new publication came up. Every time I begin to type something about him, I always don’t know what to say. What do I tell the world about the person who opened my life to writing? 

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I was devastated to find out that Walter and I never wrote a single tale of Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy in a notebook. But when I asked him if he could still recall our three friends, he confidently said yes. The devil in me died when I found out that he had not forgotten who they were, that he still remembered the language that only the two of us spoke. He is still the brother whose stories gave me shade on sunny afternoons, and shelter during rainy nights. Walter’s undocumented tales of Yaki, Baboy, and Puppy are engraved in the stories I write, and to keep writing is the only way to immortalize the memory of how my brother—who I once thought loved his books more than me—taught me how to write.