Signs Of His Awakening (Episode II)

"Marunong ka ba magdasal?" The old lady asked me.

Her oily wrinkled hands run across my head as I slouch on a candy blue plastic stool at the center of the common alleyway which leads to her tiny apartment. In front of me is a white pan with coal stacked together and whose burning embers melt the Incense, Alum and Myhrr I bought from a nearby Sari-sari store. The heavy white smoke from the concoction swallows my being. It is as if my recovery depended on that burning white pan and its exotic contents.

"Opo, marunong akong magdasal." I told her.

"Sigurado ka ba hijo?" She repeated her question, as if sensing that my faith isn't that strong enough to believe in her powers.

"O sige basta manalig ka sa akin ha. Huwag mong kokontrahin ang dasal ko at hindi tatalab ang ginawa natin. Magtiwala ka sa Kanya. Malakas ang mga kalaban mo, pero gagaling ka."

Her soothing, assuring words warms me despite the bitter cold winds of mid-February. The lady who introduces her to me seats impatiently in a monoblock chair lent by the Mangtatawas' neighbor, her eyes asking for proof whether the old lady is able to heal me.

"Bago ka matulog, magdasal ka ng tatlong Ama Namin, tatlong Aba Ginoong Maria, at tatlong Luwalhati Sa Ama. Huwag mong kalilimutan iyan." Her commands remind me of my job as a Psychic Service agent. The only difference now is that I am the one to believe her, while she is the one to convince that her faith healing will work on me.

---

I went home that night wearing a white bandana on my head.

And inside the bandana were three slices of ginger and garlic. When my mother saw me looking like Mang Kepweng, the quack doctor who appeared in movies in the late seventies, I sense her reaction borders on faith and mockery. Imagine an info-age boy who believes in the boundless power of computers and technology submitting to the will of the Mangtatawas. That is something truly ironic.

But the true irony is, I felt better after her healing session.

And whether it is because of her faith or my faith, our encounter had changed me.

In the weeks after our lives first crossed, I became inward-looking.

I began praying on my own.