An acrid sourness permeates throughout the stalls of the market. Hundreds shop here during the day. Some rely on selling the produce they’ve painstakingly gathered just so they can provide ulam for themselves and maybe their families, too.

The market, Irosin Plaza, is a haven for the tao—people—in Irosin, a small municipality in the Bicol province of the Philippines. Its presence: a wide, one-story building is just as much part of the community as the people are. Sturdily built from sheets of corrugated metal, iron, and wood, the front of the market shields sellers from the midday sun. Squint hard enough, and you can see the lines of heat wriggling off in the distance.

Rice, coconuts, mangos, and apparel are some of the many things sold at Irosin Plaza. It’s a convenient and practical method to draw passersby further into its domain. Despite the taste of vinegar in the air, it’s a welcome respite from the smell of gasoline exhausted through the pipes of motorcycles and jeepneys driving through Maharlika highway, damaging lungs and congesting sinuses.

And just outside, street dogs—askal—circle the perimeter, sniffing through the musk in search of their next meal. One dog, a mixed breed with brown spotted fur and a mane riddled with ticks, eyes a stall adjacent to the entrance. The shopkeeper, a stocky woman, notices its approach. She rolls a worn playboy magazine and shoos the dog away before returning to her daily business.

###

Thuck. Sweat drips down the nose of the butcher, one of many that line the stalls sprawled throughout the Irosin marketplace.

Thuck. The butcher is a middle-aged man with dark-olive skin and a slight hunch—conditioned by the nature of his work and a bad habit of slouching as he sits on a small stool, likely too minuscule to support his otherwise gaunt frame. 

Thuck. There are lines above his brow like forked pathways for the sweat cascading down his face like a saltwater stream. He raises his arm up high and brings it down unto the mound of flesh and meat resting on his trusty cutting board, already stained by blood and plasma. 

Thuck. The butcher slices sections off of a pig—lechon—provided by one of the suppliers of the market, likely from their own farmstead. Each cut is made to order: from the ears to the hock, everything has its use. Proven by the continuous traffic of the passersby, mounds of pork dwindle rapidly until only morsels remain. And the butcher, ever ready, with his worn, dirty wife beater and his cleaver—handle stained with age and dirt and blood—begins the cycle anew as he unhooks another cadaver and slaps the pig onto the table. Like clockwork.

Thuck. Thuck. Thuck. 

*

I’m standing there, an innocent twelve-year-old boy all doe-eyed, in awe of the display. My mother, some twenty steps away, wanders the stalls of fishmongers. Much like the butcher, they go about their routine like a simulacrum of an automated factory. 

Yellow fluorescent lightbulbs dimly illuminate the indoor marketplace, looming above the stalls of its occupants: the butchers, fishmongers, produce sellers, and general merchandisers. The pig butcher wipes his face with a hand towel and droops it over the back of his neck. His body, caressed by the light, glows yellow. The sweat lends itself to the silhouette of the man as if sanctified by the grace of the holy father.

Thuck. The man is too focused on his work to notice a chunk of meat fall from the cutting board, hitting the broken concrete floor. The smell of raw lechon tickles the nose of the askal, keeping to the shadows so as not to be seen. It inches closer.

Exhausted, the butcher squats on the plastic stool beside the stall. Removing his gloves, he picks up a damp sweat rag. He sighs as he wipes his face, hanging the towel around his neck, blind to the mutt snatching the morsel and scurrying to the streets outdoors. It finds a shaded corner of the marketplace’s exterior. The dog is panting, its eyes wild as it gnaws at its prize in delicious fervor, unaware of the pack approaching in the distance. 

The pack growls in unison. 

THUCK. This one is off-rhythm. I look at the butcher. Then, at the table. The cleaver is untouched, but the same noise—a blunt smack—echoes in the air. There’s a stillness that I feel. A tightness in my chest and a sickness in my stomach that swirls like a monsoon. Everything moves in slow motion as I scan the market for my mother. 

I see her cornered at one of the fish stalls. Her face is red, eyes wide with shock as she tries to shield herself. Dead rockfish, bangus, and mackerel stare at her in condemnation. THUCK. My ears ring—tinnitus—and my body feels frozen. The fluorescent yellow illuminates four men in front of her—her brothers—one with his arm held high as if making a declaration to Mary, the Mother of God. 

“Tangina mo!” a brother says. 

There’s barking. A pack of dogs, mouths curled in a devilish snarl, creep past the entranceway towards something unseen. 

“Bakit, ba?” mom cries. Outside of view, a dog yelps. 

“I uwu mo na ang anak mo kasam’ang yung bagong jowa,” another says. “Kadire.”

“Kung mahal mo kami talaga, namanatili ka sa Canada para maka padala ka,” scowls the third brother, his arm still head high.

“Where is our money!?”

“I have nothing,” she says. 

Dogs. They all look like dogs. Ravenous. 

“If you don’t go back to Canada and give us the money we’re owed, you’ll die here.” 

“But I have nothing,” she exclaims, “we have nothing!”

“Do you think we’re joking?” 

The man places his hand on a table as shopkeepers and onlookers watch. His fingers graze a cleaver coated in blood and fish scales. 

“We’re your family.” 

Mom turns her head. Our eyes meet. Anak, she mouths. They see me too. Their fingers pointed and outstretched, dig into my flesh despite being so far away. Seeing them distracted, she rushes towards me and grasps my hand. “We need to go,” she murmurs. 

We make our way through stalls and people. Our feet hit concrete in syncopated rhythm as everything else—the faces, the jeering, the stares—become blurry frames in a movie that I can’t make out. People are yelling and shouting and barking in the same intonation as we near the exit. I feel nothing. I am not here. But as I look at her, I can see the same pain on her face as when she discovered her marriage was born out of infidelity and that I was a bastard son to a lineage of bastard men.