What Happened on Hacienda Street
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The lot on Hacienda Street
The street we lived in didn’t have a name for much of the time it existed. In summer, we hid our little bodies behind cars or lampposts or someone’s garage. Sometimes we’d see a neighbor’s light bill or parcel and as we hid we’d read the sheet where the neighbor’s name and address was printed. Addresses were once written this way -- block number, lot number, subdivision, barangay, and the city where all these could be found. We’d return the mail where we found it as the friend looking for us approached our hiding place. When each of us was found, laughter would ring throughout the street. At night we’d go back to the lot where the tree stood. We’d trade ghost stories we either made up or heard from someone else.
There used to be many of us. Ten, fifteen, I am not sure now. Most were younger than me, though there were a few I’d call “Kuya” and “Ate.” April and May were nice. We’d fight over a game of monopoly under the mango tree’s shade when the sun was high, and when it was cool enough we’d fill the street with our screams and the slapping of our slippers on the concrete road. The reasons to scream had no limit: mataya-taya, tumbang preso, ice-ice water, pepsi-seven-up, Dr. Quack-quack, langit-lupa, (children’s games) among others
“Patay, buhay, umalis ka na diyan (dead or alive, get out of there)!” The line determined the one who had to chase the rest of us. We’d scatter and try our best to not get caught. When we got tired we’d go back to the tree. We sat around it, fanning ourselves, talking about anime or movies. The lot where the tree stood seemed to be communal land. My father had people build a stone wall for it so the soil wouldn’t keep spilling on the road. The man who lived in the house to our right had made out of concrete a white swan and agaric mushroom, both huge enough for most of us children to sit on together at once. Some of our neighbors planted pepper and eggplant shrubs in it. A friend’s grandmother would burn on its corner the leaves that fell during the day.
“When the subdivision changed management, the new people somehow saw the need to name the streets.”
We buried dead pets in that lot. Birthdays, casual meetings, and petty fights between neighbors happened there too. At its far end, there was a wall I pelted with rocks, pretending it was the sky as the rocks exploded like bouquets of fireworks. The tree was a landmark--couriers could find our house with ease as it was near the lot. Someone would bring a guitar and sit on the concrete mushroom while we sang along with whatever was on the radio’s top ten.
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The songs and the games crept to an end. We all grew up somehow. Many summers later, I realized that I wasn’t outside with my friends, and the children who ran on the street weren’t us but our younger siblings. For a while their screams and the sound of them running were comforting.
Then once when I was in college, I went home and saw a truck parked in front of the lot. Men in blue overalls stood by, looking at the tree. The truck had that thing at its back that lifted a person to the live wires on top of light posts. Later, as I was changing into my house clothes, there came the sound of a chainsaw and wood being chopped. I went out to find the tree being cut down. Its branches on the ground, its green leaves everywhere.
“Someone bought it,” my mother told me, and when I asked who, she said she didn’t know. It took almost a week to tear the tree down to its roots. I saw its chopped trunk being hauled off. When the lot was cleared, another batch of men came to put up a fence with barbed wire.
In the years after there was the silence. You wouldn’t see people around unless they had to buy something from a nearby sari-sari store. Houses grew taller. The house to our left was abandoned. The one to our right on a curve was rented by a different family. When the subdivision changed management, the new people somehow saw the need to name the streets, and they planted a pole in front of that house. “Hacienda Street,” says the green plate.
People found reasons to believe they had prospered. A lot of us who used to roam the streets had finished college. One of us was a nurse, one was an accountant, there was an arts graduate, a seaman. One of the families close to us flew to the US and settled there. I worked at a call center. Our mothers no longer had to wait for summer; they bought good mangoes from the market. Tall grass grew in the lot, vines crept along the barbed wire. I never saw who bought it. The stone mushroom and swan remained buried among the untended greenery. Some mornings, when I come home from work, I look at the lot and wonder if the afternoons we spent in it really happened.
The street name did nothing to make the couriers’ job easier, unlike the tree. Those who have something to deliver to us often get lost. They’d knock on wrong doors, and a bill could end up in the wrong mailbox. I myself struggle to fill out forms. It is quite strange to suddenly have something to write on the space for “Street Name.” I’ll get used to it though, perhaps, like the rest of us, wherever they are.
George Deoso
George Deoso, 23, is a literature graduate of the University of Santo Tomas. He is currently residing in Quezon City with his family and two dogs named Kidlat and Hi-Ho.
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