sat on a rattan chair, my little self once posed a question to my late great-grandmother with dementia
“why was i named after a saint?”

“francis, that is to protect you from the threat of carbines and tanks that the hapons toy against us, filipinos.” she spoke like i’ve been warned.

then i remembered my half-japanese friend whose brain akin to a monggo bean.

i did not believe her.

how could i believe when my friend couldn’t learn my mother tongue?

fifteen years later, i learned that my late great-grandmother used to cover her visage with thick talcum, pretending as geisha to trick the makapilis

the makapilis were filipinos who sided with the japanese.
but they were worse.
they would bang your heads with their blood-stained fists if you refuse to speak the whereabouts of a guerilla’s leader.

guised as a geisha, my late great-grandmother would lure a makapili to her home. there, she would cut his throat with a dagger and let the makapili suffer in a pool of blood.

“if you love this country, that is how you cleanse it—eliminate the ones who betray it.” she once told my mother.

often, i think about her.

all along, my late great-grandmother had been warning us—it is not always the outsiders who will hurt you, sometimes it is the ones who reside with you in the same village, same home, or share your blood.

and that would hurt a lot akin to a gunshot piercing through your waist

you must always be prepared for such treachery, like a warrior who is always ready to draw a mighty dagger from her scabbard to expel those who opt to betray her and her land.