Leaving

A Short Story

By: N. Mozart Diaz

I shouldn’t look back, I thought.

I stepped into the bus and all the world dropped dead, nothing mattered anymore not even all the things I’ve loved here. Ah, yes, all the things and all the people I have loved and loved truly, it was all gone now, just some distant memory — nothing but ghosts.

I go into the center aisle and look for my seat. I cover my nose with my hoodie, my parents said that you get used to the nauseating smell of buses, but I never did. Every now and then I still vomit, trips from Isabela to Manila are never easy — especially with the damned traffic in Santa Fe. I find my seat by the window, fix my luggage, and sit down.

I’m leaving this whole world behind me, I thought. All of my adventures and conquests and loves and past loves and all the places I have called home. I’m leaving now and it will be a very long time until I come back. All for family, all for money — just because Inang Bayan couldn’t provide for all her children. And now, to work as a construction worker in Qatar where I might be mistreated simply because I am Pinoy. Hong Kong once stereotyped my people as nothing more than maids — to hell with them anyway.

I look out to my mother, who is standing by the station waving at me. Was this success to her?Is she proud of what I’m doing? Her slouch is more evident now, all those years as a labandera now show. She worked so hard just to have my siblings and I complete school.

My father walks to her and holds her close. We were such a happy family, weren’t we? We lived in poverty, sure. But my father was able to hold the family up when things seemed bleak. Whatever land we had, father worked with it and he sowed what he reaped, most of the time. And now I leave them all, for the sake of money. I’d rather stay here, working the jobs nobody wants to make ends meet, to put my siblings through college — an opportunity I couldn’t have. But this is their dream for me, to work abroad because that’s where fortune lies.

They look so proud, I shouldn’t show them my fear. Maybe I should look back, just to wave, then text them how much I love them. I wanted to look strong, but that isn’t me right now.

The bus fills up and all the seats are taken, but there are people standing in the middle aisle. They’ll fill the whole damn thing up, I thought, and I’ll be breathing all the stale air for 8 hours or more. Damn the buses, damn the roads, damn the traffic, damn all of it. I ask the person beside me to save my seat and he agrees. I go out and run to my parents and hug them as tightly as I can, the last for a long time. We exchange our I-love-you’s and goodbyes, my mother barely holding back her tears.

I get back to my seat just before the bus leaves. I wave to them until they’re out of sight.

I’ve left the world I know behind and now it’s all just a small town growing smaller and smaller trailed by the cold, broken asphalt.