This is a work of fiction.
My Mama always wears her favorite bakya. It is a pair of sandals made of shiny wood, with big swirls carved on the heels and a strap embroidered with colorful flowers.
I like the sound it makes when Mama walks around our house. Tok, tok, tok. When she comes home from work, the hollow clacks of her steps would echo throughout our room.
I swear the floor shakes whenever she walks around! I could feel it as I pretended to sleep on our banig, which I’d always pile with lots of blankets, so it wouldn’t hurt my body to sleep on the hard floor.
When Mama comes home from work, she greets me with a warm kiss that leaves lipstick on my cheek. But she barely talks. Her eyes droop, her hair smells of sweat and her shoulders sag until her bag falls to the floor.
Still, when it’s bedtime, she would act oh-so-ladylike! She’d sit by the mirror and slowly take off her makeup, loosen her bun and remove her white beaded necklace from Divisoria.
But she loved her bakya the most! Before sleeping, she would wipe all its dirt clean with a damp rag and place them neatly on a shelf — far from our pile of old, mismatched slippers.
“Just like the First Lady,” she would tell me.
My Mama has always been fascinated with this “First Lady” that I always see on TV. I am not really sure who she is, but Mama tells me she’s the mother of our country.
Does that mean she is everyone’s Mama?
Whenever I see the First Lady, she always wears fancy gowns with big sleeves, dainty jewelry and a glint of pink on her cheeks. She waves like a queen to crowds of people and kisses the foreheads of the children she meets, though never dabbing her lips long enough to smooch. I have also watched how she walks across floors so shiny they looked like mirrors! Tink, tink, tink. I could almost hear the clink of her heels against their marble floor.
Is that a palace? Mama says so.
Sometimes, Mama would lift her foot and wiggle her bakya to compare it with the ones she saw the First Lady wearing. The cloth strap would stretch across her toes, showing how its threads had begun to fray.
Still, I’d clap my hands and say, “Mama, your shoes are prettier than the First Lady’s!”
Mama only laughs whenever I say that. She would shake her head and tell me I’m silly.
But it’s true! My Mama’s bakya is pretty because she takes care of it so dearly.
Whenever she took me for a treat in Marikina, we always stopped by the shoe stalls lined along the street. The place had shoes dangling from hooks everywhere — smelling like leather, glue and polish. Shoemakers sat on small chairs outside their workshops, hammering soles or brushing shine onto shoes that looked really chunky.
Mama would slow down at every corner whenever her eyes caught sight of a sandal or heel. Sometimes, she would lift one pair, turning it this way and that, running her finger along the stitching. But she always sets it back down gently.
I know how much Mama loves shoes. But she never had more than one pair of her own — just that bakya she kept on wearing even until the strap began to tear.
“Why don’t you get one for yourself, Mama?” I would ask.
“Oh, I have enough for now,” she’d reply.
I wondered if the First Lady said that, too. Does she ever think she has enough?
We could only afford a few laces, but Mama never left without checking my school shoes. She’d crouch down on the sidewalk, pinching the leather where it had cracked, pressing the heel where the glue had started to peel away.
“This will need stitching,” she would often say.
Surely, that can’t be something my Mama learned from the First Lady.
Because the First Lady’s shoes always looked shiny and new! I wonder if she ever wore anything twice. Did she ever love just one pair of shoes like Mama did?
If all of her things are brand new, do her children receive new toys all the time, too?
The First Lady is nothing like my Mama at all!
Sometimes I try to imagine the First Lady walking through Marikina, glistening in white as she bends down on a dirty sidewalk to check somebody else’s shoes — like my Mama does.
But her gowns look too stiff for bending. And her shoes look too shiny for dirt! I don’t think the First Lady would ever walk here.
If the First Lady were everyone’s Mama, is she anywhere near a mother the way my Mama is?
Does she notice the little scratches on her poor children’s shoes? Could she ever stitch a strap and patch a heel? Or does she always have a new one ready?
If she’s everyone’s Mama, why don’t her shoes ever get tired? Why don’t they need fixing or wiping clean? Why don’t they creak or thud on wooden floors?
Mama’s bakya walks on wood, through dust and cracks. But the First Lady’s shoes only know the cold hardness of shiny marble.
Maybe not all Mamas are the same.
And maybe the First Lady is not really a Mama after all.
