No baby talks like this baby

(A baby’s monologue, what else?)

By Emmanuelle

MY yaya ties her hair high up her head in a not so tidy ponytail and hides her thick lashes shyly behind even thicker graded glasses. Alas, she also has brown freckles on her cheeks, and over and around, thick red rashes of pimples. At sixteen years of age, she looks like she is in a rage. That means angry, for plain you and me. I have to be honest. Her dear brown red face is beauty, only to me.

She is bright and cute, but who sees? More often than not, this is what people see: her arm holding me tight on her right hip, her other arm lugging my toys, and her long legs treading her careful way around bright colored blocks, trucks and pocks of vomit and whatnot.

Long before my Dada and Mama knew I was not just one of those fat dumb babies hanging from necks and shoulders, dripping wet with weewee and milk burpies, my yaya she knew I was a genius in the bud. She threw kisses at me when I first blew my no-goo (don’t go) and she shook me dizzy with glee when I blurted out ga-ga at the same time thumping her breasts with all ten globs of my fingers, and to stress the point further, bumping her chin with my forehead. I meant it then; I mean it now. She is gaga, palangga.

When I hear her steps climbing up the stairs, I grab the sides of the crib to lift the heavy weight off my butt. I tip to my toes, I slam my palms against the bars, the balls, the tops of the crib. And I giggle I gaggle. I chuckle. I babble I bubble.

Her four eyes peer down at me. My big black eyes pop up to her wide, wider. She wraps her palms round my face and she says I must be able to see as far as my behind without turning my head. I must be alien, she says. And then she would hum the music of E.T., Encounters of the Third Kind, and for good measure, Jaws. She nozzles my plump tummy, and bites the fat off my belly.  She sucks my dimpled knees and turns me heels over head. She is truly insane, but I am crazier than her when I burst out in hiccups manen, manen! (again, again!) And I clap and I clap for good show, good acting, good for nothing!

For naps and at night, she keeps me awake, then she puts me to sleep with talks about aliens with wrap-around eyes that blink not from up to down but sides to center. She sings: so alien like you baby, so alien like you. And she makes sure she does not forget my near-midnight snack: tales of dead people and of places long gone. Also toys that talk, closets that swallow fat dumb babies and doors that open to somewhere not here.

And to bring out the best in what others think as this fat dumb baby of hers, she tells me Dagupan was Bacnotan first, then Nandaragupan before it is. About Malong’s revolt and how they cut off his head at Pantal bridge right over there. And how Pantal was Pantalan the port, a trading center and docking station for big, smoky ships. And she warns me how its mangrove swamps became fishponds and citylands and how floods shall conquer these all back. And I echo back to her ah-ba ah-ba, for all back, all back.

Lastly, she checks me out. When was Dagupan founded? I gurgle back, I did not know it was even losted, much more founded? How true, how true, she nods. And I go glow, and I go grow. This baby bows.

(Writer’s note: This article was written using mostly one/two syllable words.)

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