By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

II was Nico, my nephew, who informed me of her existence. She lived alone, abandoned by the house owners to fend for herself, with no food or water. She was thin, her flesh hanged over the skeleton within her frame. Whenever he could, Nico slipped in food from the space below the gate, which she looks at, and approaches only when she perceives no one is looking. She has learned to open the faucet, which she never closed, to drink or to call attention to her hunger.

Out of concern, a neighbor called the Homeowners Association to inform the house owner of her condition and the fact that the faucet had been running all night. Pissed by the inconvenience, the owner had permanently shut down the source of water. If the neighbor is to be believed, she was left to die a natural death, like her mother whose existence was noticed only by the smell of her decaying flesh.

On one of the rare visits of the house owner’s daughter, my nephew took the chance to inform her that the dog lives on the kindness of neighbors, like him, but someone has to take full responsibility for her wellbeing, if they intend to keep her as a guard dog, or give strangers the impression that someone still lives inside the house. The owner mentioned that she left some dog food, but maybe the dog has gotten tired of eating the same thing.  He told her that she should leave a basin filled with water, too, because the dog can’t wait for the rain to be able to drink. No one believed she ever left dog food in the house because the dog ate almost anything, including the paper plates and the plastic containers, when we failed to feed her.

The other day, I chanced upon a neighbor carrying a newspaper filled with food heading for the same gate. From her, I learned that during a typhoon, even when the owners were there, the dogs were tied to the gate, where they were drenched and exposed to heavy rain and harsh winds, making them howl the whole night. It was then she was tempted to call for rescue, but she recapitulated. I wanted to know the reason for her recapitulation, but she was rushing to go to work, and as she said goodbye, she pushed the newspaper inside the gate, calling out a name, Beyonce!

She does not remember her name, you have to say “Beyonce!” three times to get a response, but she reacts to the sound of rain. Perhaps it is because dogs have difficulty remembering names with three syllables. I started to call her “Beyon”, dropping the last syllable, and she responds. Why she responds is beyond me. But maybe she responds for other reasons, like the smell of food, or the familiar footsteps of people she had learned to trust. This trust, built over months of constancy and consistency, had finally yielded a unique friendship between Beyon and the adjacent neighbors, and developed a bond among these adjacent neighbors who never spoke to each other in the past and shut their gates after their cars were parked, for the privacy they so much treasured.

John Donne explored the concept of interconnectedness among human beings in his poem, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, which concluded on the last part, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and, therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Not only the death of “any man” or human being, but a dog’s, or the death of a forest, diminishes us all, because we are part of the web of life and must care for all. Beyond Beyonce.

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