BEFORE YURI
My grandfather is a man without a routine. Growing up in a cramped, studio condo, he was responsible for all my adventures: last-minute trips to Ocean Park, Tagaytay Ferris wheel rides on weekends, and stalking into my grade school classes two periods too late.
His impulsiveness drove my mother crazy. Crazy enough for her to forego the unspoken, traditional Filipino familial obligation, cast seething looks at all her cousins who judged her decision, and ignore my grandfather’s blubbery pleas.
She put my grandfather in a nursing home.
Sometimes I drop by the home after Wednesday classes. Other times, I go on Sundays after Mass, dragging my begrudging mother. Some weeks pass without a visit. I’ve learned this doesn’t offend my grandfather. Instead, it excites him.
“It keeps me on my feet,” he told me once. I told him he was being ironic, leaning on a steel walker, and he laughed.
Though I won’t pretend it doesn’t hurt me, the days when he rejects my visits. In the Santo Niño Nursing Home, the elderly are promised dignity — they have the choice to accept or decline leisure visitors.
Each time, I hold my breath in the reception room. I see myself reflected in the glassy eyes of harried adults and noisy toddlers. My fingers curl into clenched fists, my fists knock on the granite reception countertop, and they only stop when my grandfather’s decision is delivered to me.
***
“You can come with me,” a red-haired nurse calls out to me. Her small figure is shadowed by the dim lights of the hallway leading into the residency rooms. Catching my eye, she pivots back into the hall, clearly intent on not wasting time.
I exhale in relief. Ducking past the other people crowding the room eagerly, I try not to smile as I follow the nurse. In the past three weeks, I’ve been rejected by my grandfather twice. I debated on telling my mother, to ask her if anything was wrong. But I didn’t want to see the smug smile on her face, her telltale I told you so. Your lolo is unstable.
I know my grandfather’s room by heart but follow the stiff-lipped nurse, anyway. Up the staircase, through to the right, I notice I’ve never seen her before. She must be new, hence the efficiency and coldness injected into her work.
“Thanks,” I tell her when we reach my grandfather’s door. The front is branded the number 25 in dull gold. She nods and slips away.
I don’t need to knock, because by now, my grandfather knows to expect me. I twist the creaky doorknob, wincing at how it gives with a groan, and slide it open.
My grandfather sits in a wheelchair facing the large, French door windows that face the nursing home’s colorful garden. He doesn’t turn around even as I close the door, slamming it with careful precision to emit a small jolt.
“Hi, lolo,” I say, the word rolling through my mouth with a foreign dip. The years have gone by, along with the usage of the word. “How are you?
“My grandfather finally cocks his head. It’s a small acknowledgment, one that propels me to join him by the ornamental windows.
In a steady, deep voice fighting the pull of disuse, he says, “I can hear them.”
My jaws clamp together. His words make me feel like I am twelve again.
***
My grandfather has never been to Russia. In fact, he has never left the Philippines. The farthest he has traveled to was Cagayan de Oro in the country’s south, to court my grandmother.
When I was twelve, though, he began to claim that he was hearing them.
Them: shipwrecked sailors in outer space, meant to bring their state glory. Cries of help and fizzes of electricity, followed by deep-seated silence. Fables that weeded their way into the churning minds of theorists and truth-seekers alike, emerging as the Lost Cosmonauts.
My mother was quick to call his bluff. My grandfather started reporting the cosmonauts’ voices just as she learned of her two-week business trip to the United States.
“You’re just being paranoid,” she snapped at my grandfather. “Traveling to another country won’t go disastrous and send me into outer space.”
True, my grandfather didn’t understand. He was still incredulous of much technology: that we could see each other through screens despite being miles away, that we could tap buttons quietly for deliveries.
Still, as a twelve-year-old, I clung to his words each night my mother was in the United States, safe and sound.
“They say they’re preparing for him,” my grandfather whispered to me on the fourth night without my mother. He stroked my hair, tucking me into sleep. “The ones who came before Yuri.”
***
We play two games of chess, and he beats me without trying.
“You’re unfocused,” my grandfather tsks, lights dancing in his sallow eyes. “Your school might revoke the scholarship.”
The school won’t; I’ve represented them in Hong Kong and Thailand in this year’s chess tournaments alone. Still, I bow my head. “I’ll train harder,” I promise my grandfather. I would if you let me see you every day.
My grandfather grunts. “You should.”
We launch into a third game, and this time, we end in a stalemate. I pack the wooden pieces into the chipped rental box, gathering my bravery.
“Were they talking to you while we played?” The words leave me in the space of a rough breath. This way, I can’t stuff them back into my mouth and leave them to rot.
Throughout the games, my grandfather stopped erratically. I kept coaxing him to make his move, but after beady glares, I stopped to watch him instead. Each time, he tilted his head upwards, like he was straining to listen from a voice above.
This is the final floor of the nursing home, though. All that lies above is the run-down red roof that peeks out beyond the stump trees.
“Yes,” my grandfather says, his bushy eyebrows knitting together. “They want me to tell what I remember to you.”
***
It is important to note that nothing substantial has ever come from the voices my grandfather claims he can hear. I had been willing to indulge, asking him stories about these faceless heroes that were scrapped out of history. He appeased my curiosity in return, mimicking their voices and lending facial expressions to otherwise shadowy features.
One night, my mother caught us giggling on my bed. We’d hung blankets on my bed’s four posters, setting up radios we’d scoured from junk shops. It was a culmination of two months’ work, all torn down by my mother’s inquisitive stare.
“What are you doing?” My mother demanded. Before we could stuff the beaten radios into my pillowcase — our plan if any ‘intruders’ happened to arrive — she’d disassembled the hanging blankets. They billowed around her figure, as if unwilling to touch her as well.
“We’re just listening to the radio,” I said, pointing to the heap of silver boxes.
“There’s nothing playing,” she responded, resting a manicured hand on a cocked hip.
When she said that, the bubble my grandfather had eased me into popped. Reality’s maws snapped me up: all I could hear was silence, save for three, dissonant breaths. Turning to my grandfather, watching him shake his head, I could tell he heard otherwise.
***
I manage to wheedle my grandfather out of his room come dinnertime. We take twelve minutes down the service ramp, which leads us straight into the mess hall. Dinner is laid out for us, a two-seater table in the corner boasting salad and hamburger doused in gravy.
Throughout the meal, my grandfather is silent. This attracts not only my attention but the nurses, who come over but slide away after he rebukes them. “Just let me listen to the piano,” he grumbles. It’s a smart excuse; every few nights, the nursing home invites musicians to entertain the elderly over dinner. Tonight, it’s the piano man.
After finishing dinner, we return to his bedroom. I sit on his thin bed as the same nurse from earlier helps him bathe. Water trickles softly from the bathroom meters away. My grandfather emerges half an hour later, baby-pink skin smelling of jasmine and wet clumps of hair sticking out from his head.
“She is not nice,” my grandfather says, just as the nurse closes the door after her.
I shush him, pushing down the flimsy bed so he can climb onto it. He shrugs. “They agree.”
I pull a woolen blanket over his thin frame. It’s one of the two I forced my mother to begrudgingly give him for Christmas; we picked it out in a bazaar, haggling for a promo. This one is red, sporting faded candy stripes, and my grandfather pulls it up to his neck.
“Now,” he says, clearing his throat, kicking at his blanket faintly. “Repeat what they told you. Make sure you remember it all.”
Everything he’s told me about them is easy to remember: The cosmonauts are sad. They are scared. They regret being bribed into their missions. They knew the risks and still chased after the reward. They want to see their family again. They will never see their family again.
I know these anecdotes are the stuff of films and fake recordings, recycled into fireside camp stories to make the weak-hearted shiver. Still, I can’t deny the way my grandfather forced them onto me with a persuasive certainty, open-faced and pleading.
By the time I’ve finished my spiel, my grandfather has drifted into sleep. His light snores compete with the ticking of the wall clock. I check the time, match it to my wristwatch. It’s already nine.
I stand up, testing the waters. My grandfather doesn’t stir. Taking this as an affirmation, I plant a kiss on his forehead and smooth his hair down. I pick up my satchel bag, laid on the small desk sporting frames of stained pictures and snow globes, and leave the room.
I sign out in the receptionist’s log. The nurse recites their spiel for leaving visitors, telling me to come again. Because my grandfather is a man without a routine, I have no way of knowing when that will be.
Andrea Salvador lives somewhere in Asia, specifically a country with thousands of islands and constantly humid weather. She is an alumna of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program and the Sonorous Writing Workshop, while her work has been recognized by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Columbia College Chicago, Trinity College – University of Melbourne, and Interlochen Arts Academy. In her spare time, she creates lists, watches sci-fi and horror movies, and rearranges her bookshelf. Find her on Twitter at @andreawhowrites.