I search his words for clues that might reveal what my dad left unsaid, that might point toward one of the grim ends Em guessed. But the letter says no more than it says. I fold it and place it back with the others, then close the lid as if to a coffin. I turn onto my side so I’m facing the wall and let the tiredness, the sadness, overtake me.
Malungkot ako.
Eventually, I feel myself drifting off to sleep. As I do, I think about how even though there’s a lot I don’t know, I do know it isn’t right for Jun’s family to deny him a funeral. No matter how he died. No matter how he lived.
AN IMPROVEMENT TO SOCIETY
I wake to the sound of the garage grinding open. My room is pitch black, and when I check the time on my phone I find that it’s almost five in the morning. There are a few texts from Seth from last night that I ignore. Downstairs, a door opens and shuts, then footsteps shuffle across the floor. I almost drift back to sleep when I remember Jun is dead. For a moment, I wonder if I dreamed that conversation with Dad, but then dread settles into my heart and I know I didn’t.
I need to speak with Mom. She’s always able to extract information from Dad that nobody else in our family can, so if anyone knows more about what happened to Jun, it’s her.
I throw the covers back, and head downstairs through the dark house.
She’s in the kitchen, back to me as she puts a kettle of water on the stove for her post-shift cup of chamomile tea. Her blond hair—which I definitely didn’t inherit—is tied back in a ponytail, and she’s still in her scrubs like Dad was. They work at the same hospital, where she’s an oncologist and he’s a NICU nurse. When Chris, Em, and I were younger, they used to work opposite shifts so that at least one of them could always be on family duty. We rarely saw them together beyond one day a week and family vacations. But after I finished elementary school, they aligned their schedules, and as we grew up, they grew closer.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, looking a mess in my wrinkled clothes.
She stops what she’s doing and turns around. Her weary face transforms into a picture of sympathy in a heartbeat. She crosses the space between us and wraps her arms around me. “I’m so sorry about Jun,” she says. “I know you two were close. If I could have, I would have been here sooner.”
Earlier I thought that I wanted someone to hold me. But now that someone is, it doesn’t make anything better.
Mom kisses my forehead. “How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” I say, but that’s not what I want to talk about. I shed her arms and back away. “Why aren’t they giving him a funeral?”
She hesitates, like she has an answer ready but is having second thoughts about going with it. Eventually, she says, “You know how your uncle is.” Then she turns around and busies herself with prepping her tea.
“Yeah, but—”
“His family doesn’t want to talk about it. We should respect that.” She closes the cabinet door hard, like a full stop at the end of her sentence.
But I need to know more. I need to know what happened to my cousin. Maybe only for the sake of knowing—but maybe because I need to hear that it wasn’t my fault. That, whatever happened, a few more letters from me wouldn’t have made a difference.
“You know the reason—don’t you? You can tell me. I’m not a kid anymore.”
She rests her hands on the counter but doesn’t answer.
I think about the words in Jun’s final letter, the part about how everyone pretends like they don’t see the suffering around them.
“So we’re just going to act like this didn’t happen? Like Jun didn’t even exist?”
After a beat, she turns around to face me and crosses her arms. “If that’s what’s best for his family, then yes.”
“Do you lie to your patients?” I ask.
She raises her eyebrows. “Not to my patients, but sometimes to their families, yes.”
“You serious?”
She nods. “Sometimes my patients want me to lie for them. Nothing out of line. Mostly they want me to say something in a way that will give their loved ones relief. Or at least, something that won’t leave them with too much despair.”
I shake my head. Unbelievable.
“If I have a patient who is dying slowly and painfully, and he asks me to tell his family that he won’t suffer in his final moments, what am I supposed to do?”
“If they ask, tell the truth.”
“Even if the truth does nothing but cause the family anguish?”
“They deserve to know.”
“Or do they deserve peace?”
I say nothing.
She sighs. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
“No.”
“Just like your father . . .” she says quietly.
Except her comment confuses me because he lets everything go.
“It’s not going to do anything for you,” she says. “Except cause you more pain.”
“I know.”
The teakettle starts whistling. Neither of us moves.
Finally, Mom breaks eye contact and removes the kettle from the stovetop. She pours the water into the waiting mug, drops in the tea bag, then pushes the mug toward me. “Careful. It’s hot.”
“Thanks.”
She glances toward the entrance to the kitchen. Then she takes a deep breath and asks, “Do you know what shabu is?”
“Shabu?” I repeat, testing the shape of the unfamiliar word in my mouth. It sounds like it could be Tagalog, but I’ve never heard it before. I shake my head.
“It’s what they call meth in the Philippines,” she says. “A cheap high. Easy to find. Devastating.”
My stomach flips. “Oh.”
“I don’t know everything,” Mom continues, “only what your dad tells me, and I can tell he doesn’t know the full story either. You know how his family is. But, in this case, I don’t think he wants to know any more.”
“What do you mean?”
“After Jun ran away from home, he started living on the streets. At some point he started using.”
I stare hard at my untouched cup of tea. A lump forms in my throat. “Overdose?”
Mom shakes her head.
I look up. “Then what?”
“He . . .” She trails off and looks around again as if to make sure Dad isn’t within earshot. Then her eyes land on mine and soften. “He was shot.” She pauses. “By the police.”
“The police?”
She nods.
“Why would the police shoot him for using drugs?”
She takes another deep breath. “Duterte.”
I wait for her to say more.
Mom blinks. “Rodrigo Duterte? President of the Philippines?”
I know she’s waiting for understanding to dawn on my face, so I look down, feeling like a fool.
“You don’t know about him? About the drug war?”
“I’ve read a little,” I say, so I don’t look completely stupid. But the truth is, I never made it past the headlines.
“Really, Jay, you should pay more attention to what’s going on in the world outside of your video games.”
“Sorry,” I mumble. But it’s not like our family is the model for current events analysis. There was another major school shooting a few weeks ago, and “It’s so sad” and “It really is” and “I’ll never understand those people” was the extent of my parents’ conversation about it over dinner. They didn’t even ask how I felt.