The gecko is following me, its rabid eyes boring into the mound of flesh that was my beaten traitorous body. I can almost feel the lithe movements of its throat, forming the rattles—a prelude to the thunderous rounded sound of its name. The lizard has shifted and I force my feet to take a step, and another, and another, forward, away from the creature’s gaze. I hate geckos; they scare me. I never know why, I just do. And as I climb the hundred feet mountain with fatigue eating my consciousness, the reptile has become my beacon of motivation. I am tailing you, hurry up or I will croak.
I want to laugh at my imagination, only, my muscles are too tired to move, my throat too dry to cackle a sound. I’ve been trekking for almost an hour and the sun is on the last phase of nose-diving into the Bay. I’m almost on the eleventh station; I can almost see the statues at the edge of the mountain. But my anxiety of lizards has been almost non-existent at this point—I am too tired to feel motivated by fear. My heart pounds, my knees shake uncontrollably and almost give way by the twelfth station.
The trees thin the higher I go. They no longer rush to the sky with sturdy branches and my path has evolved from dense foliage to thorny drying barks. There are more dirt and stones, as brown as the lizards that used to pester my thoughts. I drink the last drops of water in my bottle, quickly fizzling from my throat like descending daylight. I push away the ideas of lizards and twilight and continue with the walk—three more stations and I’m done with this trail. I don’t hike, I don’t pray, I don’t do stations of the cross—especially not in an island where nobody knows me, and not on a mountain where I can easily be slaughtered and nobody will know. And yet, I am here, doing everything as if it’s my only choice. What. The. Hell.
My knees almost give way after the hundredth step and the ground has shifted rapidly, the dusty landscape turned to thirsty rocks and moss, gulping the sprays of rain that sprinkled my face. I finally give up at the foot of the thirteenth station, the geckos completely forgotten. I am angry. I am scared. I am alone. I am in pain. My system, now in overdrive, splashes out hot wet tears. I want to go home, I failed. I cannot complete the trail. I cannot cross through. My soul cannot—refuse—to resurrect and forget.
In my childhood, when the only turmoil that exists are bedlams with cousins, my grandmother tame us with stories; if it isn’t the aswang or the duwende or the kapre in the backyard, it’s the gecko. In the middle of the night its slimy feet would hop from the tree to the roof of the house, crawling into the fold, waiting to jump on noisy children. And when my lola reaches this part of the story, my hair will stand on ends: the creature sticks on summer burnt skins, and you can’t shake them off. You have to burn it alive, she says, or chop its head off. I don’t want to kill it, but I don’t want it on my skin either. The limited options have driven me crazy as a kid. And twenty years after, it still does.
How do I remove a gecko? Do I light it up? Do I slap it until it cries? Or do I stare at its swollen reptilian pupils and ask for it to go away? Or do I just go on, let it hang on my skin like a badge of courage?
The rain stops and the skies become littered with foam. I stand and continue. My heart has calmed down and my knees have been re-energized. I reach the end of the stations, where He stands at the side of the cliff, overlooking the tranquil confluence of sea, sky, and land. The sun has disappeared but left soft shades of blue on the darkening horizon.
My eyes land on a tree, where a lizard—a real gecko—hangs. We stare at each other amid the deafening chorus of crickets. Its throat rattles and spurns out that otherworldly treble of narcissism—a sound that merges with the other sounds of the coming night. Geeeccc-kkooo, it says, before sprinting off. I laugh and turn. And with shaking knees, begins my slow equally torturous descent. The only vestige of turbulence are the sweat on my clothes and the dirt on my feet, which I intend to wash in the hot springs tonight. - 3/17/2014
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