Writer in Focus

Jaime An-Lim is an educator, painter, poet, critic and fictionist. He received his AB English from
the Siliman University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Indiana University, Bloomington. He
edited “Peace Mindanao”, a book project of the Philippines Center for International (P.E.E).
under a grant from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

He was given the Academy of American Poets Awards in 1981, the Tutungi Prize in 1983, Ellis
Literary Award in 1984, and the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards in Literature for his fiction,
critical essay, and poetry.

Son
By Jaime An-Lim

The man wanted a son desperately. It did not seem an unreasonable demand. All young
husbands must have wanted the same thing, he thought, whether they said so or not. A son to
bear the family name, to fulfill his own secret lost ambitions, to carry the illusion of immorality.

He had grown up in a house full of overprotective and doting sisters. He never had a brother
who could have shared the joy of a rambunctious childhood. Shouting matches, skinned knees
and all.

His pregnant wife felt put upon by her husband's inordinate desire for a son. She could not very
well command her body to produce a boy. Climbing the right side of the bed or having sex
during her most acidic period, notwithstanding. There was no guarantee. Besides, she did not
feel strongly either way, boy or girl. So long as it was healthy and complete. Ten tiny fingers, ten
tiny toes. No more, no less. She did not even care if it came out bald.

So she was relieved to find out, after the ultrasound, that it was going to be a boy. And even
doubly relieved, later, to be assured how perfectly healthy and normal it was. Her husband
wanted rambunctious; well, rambunctious it promised to be. Months before it was due, it rolled
and kicked spiritedly. It was as if it could not wait to get out.

With immense pride, the man caressed the baby's head and fists and elbows through his wife's
distended belly. During the ninth month, it quieted down a bit, its movement getting sluggish.
When it was pulled out later, the baby was already blue. Very blue and very dead. It had been
dead two weeks in its mother’s womb, helplessly entangles in the umbilical cord.

The woman was grief-stricken, the man devasted. When they embraced, it was not clear who
was consoling and who was being consoled.
In the memorial park, they picked a spot that got the morning sun and had a lovely view of the
Iligan Bay beyond the treetops of mahogany and pine. For a while they visited every weekend
because the man could not bear the thought of his son being alone, buried in the windswept
hillside. Without saying, Let's visit Jun-Jun," they would go straight to the Pala-o market after
Sunday mass, pick up a fresh bunch of white miniature mums, and go to the cemetery. There
they would sit on the Bermuda grass by the baby's grave and watch the inter-island ships inch
into harbor or sail toward the horizon for unknown shores. Sometimes, the man would talk to
his son." Son," he would begin in his head. "Son..." But there was nothing else he could say,
except what he had already said before: that he wished he were there with them, that he could
hold him in his arms, that he was at peace wherever he was in spirit, among the angels. The
woman, who had already come to terms with their son's death, kept a worried eye on the living
and let the dead take care of itself.

Time passed. Once a week eventually became once a month. Then once or twice a year, usually
on the baby's birthday and on All Soul's Day in November.

Some days no thought about their son crossed their minds. If they felt a lingering emptiness
inside, they would be hard pressed to say what it was exactly, or what had been taken away.
They did not mean to forget their loss or lessen their grief. It was just that there were other
pressing things to think about. And, partly, because by then they already had other children.
Four in a span of eight years, all girls, one after another. If the man felt disappointed, he did not
let on. He realized that he did not love them any less for being what they were, and even
enjoyed their endless girl talk of crushes and fashion and movie stars.

The son faded in the background. There was nothing in its brief life to call forth a memory: a
peculiar walk, how he laughed, his favorite nursery rhyme, game or TV show, the shirts hanging
in the closet, how he combed his hair. They could not even remember the color of his hair or his
eyes.

But the man seemed content enough now. Then, during a routine physical checkup, prior to the
man's retirement from government service, they discovered he had liver cancer. It came as a
complete shock because the man did not feel any great pain in his body. He did not smoke, did
not drink. He exercised regularly. That was in November. In December, he lost thirty pounds
and his skin turned waxen and yellow. In January, his mouth became so dry—it was coated with
a white chalky substance—he could hardly speak above a whisper. He kept asking for water. His
face shrunk around his skull. He became all cheekbones and sunken eyes. When it was clear he
did not have much longer to live, he gathered his wife and his four grown daughters round his
deathbed and told them his last wishes.

He died two weeks later, on Valentine's Day. According to his wishes, they buried him with his
son, in the same grave that faces the east and had a view of the sea. The son’s small bones
were collected into a soft cloth bag and tucked in the crook of his right arm. So, in the end, the
man who remembered desperately wanting a son once, finally cradled him in death as he had
never cradled him in life.