Family Portraits

by Ella Leenail Deduro

“Dali na, mapa-picture kita!” My cousin’s shrill voice of excitement—and her arms that

reached out for me almost roughly—made me turn around, my own hands midway from taking a

bite of the relyenong bangus. She was smiling broadly, her cellphone in hand, her hair sticking to

her oily yet pimple-free, plump face— Neneng. Like always, I looked at her like she was asking

the worst thing she could ever ask for from me. I tried to shirk away from her grasp.

“Ay, indi na magdalagan bala!” She insisted, voice sharp, but then she laughed loudly as

she dragged me towards our other cousins, gripping my wrist tightly. I pouted. I had wanted to

get a piece of the relyenong bangus first, or maybe a small piece of butterscotch for a pre-meal

dessert, if there ever was such a thing. Maybe I should head back to Mommy’s house for a glass

of water; the humidity was making me feel parched. Perhaps I should sit down on one of our old

dining chairs and marvel at how well-done it was for a furniture, lasting as long as two decades.

But Neneng was already holding my hand, knowing that I might head off somewhere else.

A few moments and what felt like hundreds of snaps later, I tried to massage the muscles

on my face. Now having completed my obligation, I tried to find an opening in the crowd,

attempting to go back to Mommy’s house and out of the shed where one of the youngest of our

clan, the birthday boy, was being shushed as he cried. He was cranky due being smothered by

too many people. Finally, I was able to squish myself out of the throng of people. As I took one

step out, the San Rafael sun reflected itself on the yellowish, hard soil, towards my cheeks. I

squint. Too bright. Too hot. I tried to escape the cruelty of the heat, backing my sandaled feet
hurriedly. I bumped at another cousin in my hurry to find shade as soon as I could. I blurted out

my apologies.

“O, hinay lang,” Toto Apple, a cousin, gave me a look of annoyance and worry —a look

that spoke, “you silly girl, be careful.” He did not say the words; he did not have to. Instead, he

patted me and pinched my cheeks like I was a three-year-old. I grimaced as he whipped his long

hair in shades of dark brown, and exclaimed in the same, dramatic flair that he always did,

waving his fingers daintily in the air about him: “Baw, wala gid ta ya family portrait ‘no? Ara

balang complete!”

“Gani man,” another cousin, Nennen, agreed at the thought of our family having no

family portrait. “Wala man tuo day Dada a,” she remarked, fanning herself vigorously with a

handkerchief. She was sweating; but then, no one was not without sweat here. Not under the

unforgiving San Rafael heat.

----

The San Rafael heat. Perhaps, it was the reason why Dada Rudy was not able to come.

The oldest among my mother’s siblings, he was nearing eighty years old. Dada, who was the

only male in a brood of four, was married to a former college English professor: Mamang.

Dada had grey— almost silver— hair, with a square-shaped torso to match. He would

blink too much, even when he was just standing with his hands on his back, idle yet restless—

like how our grandfather used to when he was still around. Dada was a carpenter by trade,

having skills that he had perfected by being Papang’s— our grandfather and his father’s—

apprentice. It was a known story in the family that he took over the carpentry shop Papang

established and managed. But that was before, when he could still hold a hammer without
trembling and could make the necessary measurements for a house just by looking at it with his

ever-blinking eyes. He also used to make frames for pictures in the old fashion way: using wood,

commissioned studio pictures, and steady hands.

Mamang and Dada had four children: Ninong MM, Ninang Cute, Toto Dream, and

Nonoy Fer. It was rather quaint, even for me, for my parents to decide that I was to have

godparents who were my cousins as well. But this was true with our later cousins, whose

godparents were cousins and relatives, like it was a family legacy.

Ninong MM was a Chief Engineer in a boat, married, with three children of his own. He

often complained about his finances despite having the most pay out of all his siblings, perhaps

out of all us cousins. He once bought me an expensive table tennis racket and promised to come

by sometime to play the sport with me, but he never arrived, even if I had waited for weeks on

end. His sister, Ninang Cute, married his bestfriend, Ninong Eddie. Ninang Cute and Ninong Ed

weren’t blessed with children however, and perhaps it had taken a toll on the couple more than

they dare to tell. Ninang Cute suffered losses of two babies in a span of five years— a time span

short enough for it to fly by, but long enough to leave scars. Since then, she had dedicated her

time raising dogs and plants. Those, she once told us, were her babies; but she still had regular

check-ups with her OB-GYNE.

After her came Toto Dream, a bachelor, who was teaching Biology in one of the most

distinguished high schools in Thailand. We would rarely see him; I barely knew him. All I knew

of him was what he would post in his social media account: videos of him eating grilled bugs for

fun, playing the piano, dancing, working out, and singing well. He didn’t go home frequently

enough for me to be that acquainted with him. But it was said that he had wanted to pursue
Medicine; Mamang did not allow him to. It was not only for financial reasons, as it was said in

hushed family after-dinner gossips, but more so because Mamang was not exactly as morose and

subdued as she was when I got to know her. She was horrible, my older cousins would say, a

stern, horrible lady who spoke Kinaray-a with a New Lucena accent and who barely supported

her children in their hobbies and interests. She only laxed, they said, when Nonoy Fer came.

Perhaps it was because he was her youngest; perhaps it was to make up for how she had been to

her other children. Whatever her reason was, Nonoy Fer got away with almost anything: from

skipping classes, to being a gang leader, to stealing a professor’s baked chocolate cake from the

Foods Laboratory when he was in college. He even got away with raising children—children

who had his genes, but that he did not acknowledge. His recent partner, though, was Dada’s

helper. Mamang suffered a stroke in 2020, leaving the right side of her body weak, and her

barely able to stand up on her own. With their children being physically absent, Dada, just as he

had vowed years ago, took care of his wife— his aging wife who would shake him awake when

she needed to ‘go potty’ and who would get annoyed when Dada forgot to turn on the television

when Ang Probinsyano was on.

Perhaps that was it: Dada couldn’t come, because of the San Rafael heat, and because

Mamang could not be left alone. Or perhaps, it was because he was old.

-----

But Nanay would have come. She would have loved the party; she would have

spearheaded the party. Nanay Erma, with her thin, grey hair, petite figure, and easy-going smile,

would have loved to cook her relyenong bangus and fuss over Toby, the birthday boy. Her
husband, Tatay Roger, would have eaten the whole belly of the lechon if he could, and perhaps

would’ve asked for a plastic bag of it to take home for his dinner.

Nanay was the oldest girl, the second sibling after Dada. She was a teacher-librarian by

profession, a simple woman with simple wants. When we were younger, she loved to take us to

Calle Real in Iloilo City to buy the most that our money could buy from the Chinese stores

selling Chinese wares, no matter how small of an amount it was, for the lowest prices. She

preferred to shop there because one could buy many without spending too much. She was

practical to boot, just like that.

If only the same could be said of Tatay Roger, perhaps us cousins would have been raised

without knowing what steak was, or how to use a knife. Nanay would have taught us, but we

would not have eaten a steak, and do so with a knife. Tatay was a city boy who loved luxury,

who gambled, and— he used to reminisce with a wistful smile of remembering— who went to

fiestas to woo helpless young women who swooned as soon as he flashed them a smile and

whispered sickly-sweet promises in their ears. Only Nanay, he said, halted his errant ways. It

was her headband, he said—and her—that made him swoon as soon as she flashed him a smile.

Nanay and Tatay had three daughters: Inday Mar, Nene Bim, and Inday Darling. Inday

Mar was a chemical engineer by profession but had opted an office job because she could not

handle pungent chemicals. Nanay once jokingly remarked that that was Tatay’s legacy: all three

daughters had inherited his asthma. Tatay would scowl, but Nanay would only do so after

cooking Tatay’s favorite pork adobo. Tatay would not retaliate. Nanay was known for her quick

wit and scathing, direct remarks; to do so was to ask for a swift attack without a chance for

rebuttal.
 Ne Bim was a nurse who had a rather rocky marriage for many years. It was said that it

went like so because Ne Bim did not ask for the family’s blessing to marry her ex-husband. It

was a lesson told to us younger children, a lesson on one of the family values we upheld: respect

for our elders. Anything important we might decide on, like getting married, was to be done

properly, as properly as our elders would have it— which meant pamalayi, where the man would

go to the woman’s house, talk to her parents and elders, and ask for her hand in marriage. Ne

Bim forewent with that. She came home one day in their shared rented house in Manila, as Inday

Darling would recall years later, dressed in a simple white dress. Ne Bim woke her up, only to

tell her that “Nagpakasal na kami,” – her and her then-boyfriend decided to get —had already

been— married, without paying their respects. It was one our family’s greatest loss.

Inday Darling, too, had a heartbreak: the man who wanted her had to be tied to someone

else— it was his family’s tradition. It was not the main reason why she went back home from the

United Arab Emirates, where Inday Mar and Ne Bim were, but it was one of the reasons why our

family had to support her for years, especially when she had to stay at home to take care of her

aging and sickly parents.

Nanay and Tatay, with their daughters, would have handled the menu of the party. They

were all good cooks, each with their own specialties. Who could rival Nanay’s salmon nga

bangrus or Tatay’s carne frita? But as much as they cannot cook, they too, could not make the

picture-taking, if there was one.

Only Inday Darling came. She cooked the chopseuy and baked the cake. Her sisters were

abroad, and Nanay and Tatay had passed away. Tatay went first, in 2017. And like how it was in
all true love stories, Nanay followed our Tatay, her love, a few months after his first death

anniversary.

-----

The party was held at Mommy’s house. Mommy, the third of the siblings, owned a

funeral home business, mainly because her husband was an embalmer. Daddy Boy, a man with a

wide girth and small warts on his neck, was nine years Mommy’s junior. Daddy’s a survivor—he

had meningitis in the late 1990s. It had rendered him comatose for three months. That was before

I was born. None of us could have imagined how Mommy had felt, but it was safe to say that she

never wavered. While Nanay was a person who was upfront with courage, Mommy was always

the silent one. She bore everything in her silent ways: sitting by her husband’s bedside, not

caring if there was no assurance that he would wake up, entertaining herself with radio drama

and embroidery or sewing, as crossing her legs as she would, like a prim and proper lady.

Mommy was a dainty woman who liked applying Pond’s cream when she was a younger, and

drinking Ensure when she got older. The medicines, her children often joked, were things that

Mommy could do away with, if the house had a steady supply of her favorite Ensure milk.

Mommy and Daddy’s children were Nene Ginger and Toto Apple, around two years

apart. Nene Ginger was called “Ginger” because when she was a baby, she used to have fevers

all the time. As none of the doctors they went to could pinpoint the cause of her illnesses,

Mommy and Daddy resorted to bringing their daughter to faith healers. Always, the faith healers

would say, she had tuyaw—some sort of touch by the unseen, may it be ghosts or elementals—

that made her ill most of the time. The faith healers would treat her with ginger: they would blow

on her crown and make marks on her temples, wrists, and ankles, murmuring incomprehensible
and sometimes inaudible prayers that should—and would—drive the tuyaw away. They also

advised that she should carry a piece of ginger with her all the time, tucked away in the pockets

of her shorts or tied by a piece of string. Until she was around ten years old, she did carry a piece

of ginger about her person, lest ‘matuyawan sya’— she would have tuyaw— and fall ill again.

Toto Apple though, was named such because during his birth, he cried so much he turned

so red; “Daw Fuji Apple,” our grandfather remarked with a laugh— referring to, and likening,

his then newly-born grandson to a type of apple with deep red skin. The name amused the

parents, and they had decided then, that he would be called “Apple.” As younger children, Toto

Apple was the character in some of the silliest family stories, like the time he hid a basin used for

cooking by Nanay under the bed. Nanay, who was then catering to a local school camping at the

central elementary school, sent Toto on an errand to deliver a basin to be used for storing food.

But Nanay came back home, disappointed, because no basin came for no Toto Apple was there

to deliver them. The basin was found under the bed, weeks later. When asked why, he did not

offer any explanation, other than perhaps, them speculating that the crowd overwhelmed the then

young boy of ten. To our family’s amusement, Nene Ginger would taunt him with the memory as

they grew older, like how older siblings often do; it could be said that perhaps, she would

continue to do so, until they were both old.

While Daddy, Nene Ginger, and Toto Apple were able to attend the party, and would

have been there for the family portrait, Mommy was unable to. She rested eternally, in the year

2019.

----
 Then, there was my mother. She was the youngest of her siblings, but she was the first to

go. She died when I was old enough to have memories of her, but young still that I could

remember everything about her—everything, but her face. She used to bake the best

butterscotch, so good that decades later, my cousins would still talk of how good and how

different and how incomparable her butterscotch was compared to any other. The nutty flavor of

it, coupled with the sweet and the chewy and the bites that were so perfectly proportioned that no

other butterscotch would have, and oh, how they melt in one’s mouth like chocolate! Her

adobong saging, too, was a hit. She used to cook it when our family would gather and they

would play mahjong, slapping the tiles that click so audibly one could hear them next door, and

so unmistakably that the sounds were associated to nothing but the mahjong tiles.

My mother married my Papa. It was a love affair that was slow of burn, like how it was

before in producing even a single picture using a single film. They started out as bestfriends

since they were younger, my brother and I were told, and they used to be each other’s

chaperones on dates. Papa used to be a worker at Papang’s shop as well, and he and Mama were

each other’s childhood friends, and eventually, each other’s love. When I was younger and

dreamt of romance, I used to hope that my own love story would be like how theirs were: steady,

but so sure. Before they knew it, they got married, and they got married twice: first, in eyes of

the law, and the second, in front of God.

My mother thought my brother would be their only child. He was already seven years old

when my mother found out she was pregnant with me. She discovered it already on her fourth

month. She, too, was already in her forties and so was Papa. I was a menopausal baby who had

to be delivered via cesarean section. My brother was said to have not been anticipatory of my

arrival, especially when he learned I was a girl. I could imagine his dismay as well, when he
learned that I was the opposite of what he wanted me to be: while he was rowdy and of high

spirits, I was timid and preferred sitting by myself. I was the opposite of everything he hoped I

would be, but I would like to think that despite our age gap, he did cherish me. No one bothered

me at school because they knew he was my big brother. Messing with me meant that they were

messing with him—and no one wanted that. My brother had always been a broad-shouldered

boy, with airs of confidence that he had unmistakably gotten from our father.

Our Papa, who did attend the party, preferred to hide away from cameras. I would like to

think it was because he knew that taking pictures were my mother’s—and her siblings’—favorite

hobby. My mother’s neatly kept pictures, mementos, letters, and albums of and from all her

nephews and nieces, just like how she used to organize her recipe tabs alphabetically, were

enough evidence. My brother might have gotten his airs of confidence from my father, but I

would like to think that Papa took his from Mama, his beloved Dayday, who was taken from him

and his children too soon, and one whose face their own daughter could barely remember.

----

If there would be a family portrait to be made of our family, I would like to think that one

would not be enough. We would not fit inside a frame, no matter how big it would be. We just

couldn’t. These people were just direct cousins, and direct aunts and uncles. We had more

cousins: Nennen, whose mother left her in Nanay’s care; Neneng, whose father entrusted her to

Mommy’s strict and dutiful upbringing; even Mama Iyay, who was Mommy’s schoolgirl—a

term our family would refer to relatives and children of relatives who would ask for help in

sending them to school in exchange for domestic service— and who became a teacher, had a
family of her own, but still stayed with Daddy. We were all raised together— siblings more than

cousins. We also had more aunts and uncles than I could mention or count.

Many of our family members could be boxed by a mere frame; many of them are not

with us anymore— physically. Physically, we would not be able to fit ourselves. It would be

silly, to have all these people fit in a frame just to show how familial we could be with one

another. But frames would not be enough spaces to capture our family. Not when I took a piece

of the relyenong bangus and a small piece of butterscotch for a pre-meal dessert, if there ever

was such a thing. Not when I would head back to Mommy’s house for a glass of water, my

parched throat grateful for a gulp. Not when I would take a seat on one of our old dining chairs

and marvel at how well-done it was, lasting as long as two decades, and how pretty it was for a

furniture. I would touch the wood that Dada and Papang had shaped.

As I headed back to Mommy’s house with a piece of butterscotch—my mother’s recipe

—and a plateful of Nanay’s version of relyenong bangus that Nene Ginger had already mastered,

I took a seat at the two-decade-old dining chair made by our grandfather’s and uncle’s hands. I

took a deep breath and I smiled: the dining table was already invaded by my cousins, ever so

boisterous and greedy for food, fun, and gossip. Mama Iyay was already egging Nennen and my

brother on for a challenge of mahjong. Neneng happily scrolled through her phone for pictures of

the birthday party to post on her timeline later. Toto Apple was munching on spoonful after

spoonful of cake, trying to stop his eyes from rolling as Nene Ginger told him he already had too

many sweets. He was thirty-four, he said, not four, but Nene Ginger retorted back with a fierce,

“Daw bata payaon ka.” Toto rolled his eyes then, a testament to how the child in him never left

—at least, not at that moment. Daddy was laughing at some joke that Papa said, both having their

usual afternoon cup of coffee. The heat from the outdoors had been rivaled by the heat inside the
dining room. I felt warm, yes, but I did not sweat. I looked at the chaos around our dining table

again, looking at the picture it made—so many losses, so much jagged edges…

…and I was warmed. This, and I, was home.