penetrated

my heartbeats raced with the droplets of sweat that ran down my forehead to my chin as i passed by the church. i prayed a couple of our father and hail mary but the guilt will not go away. each step i took on the mud-coated pavement brought back flashes of my grandmother’s warnings about impregnating a woman and ruining my future.

“you might not know, but a pregnant woman can ruin you and your future” she would always remark.

as i wiped the sweat trying to dominate my body, i thought of creative excuses to hide my guilt attached with fear.

i was born at my grandmother’s house in muñoz, nueva ecija, on a sunlight-filled wednesday afternoon of june in 1986. since then, till my 4th grade in primary school, my grandmother looked out for me while my parents were busy at work.

although my grandmother was not in league with the pious senior citizen churchgoers in our town, she sees to it that each morning, she would rave about her strict implementation of values to her children. no premarital sex, no scandals, no cursing, no discussion of sex, no immorality- these were her set of ‘no’ policies that should be observed under the roof of her jurisdiction. she could have been a very proud mother, if not for my father who one day brought with him a woman with a bloated belly; and that is my mom.

i slowed down my pace and thought of how i could disappoint my grandmother if she knew that in a span of nine months, three ladies from our neighborhood will have to deliver babies carrying my genes.

i was on third grade then. it happened one afternoon as my grandmother played cards with the other women of our neighborhood. three of my neighborhood friends were with me; tukne, mayang and jona. i was not sure if it was the afternoon’s temperature or our raging hormones that encouraged us to take off our clothes and lie side by side on our bed. tukne landed on my top, then i landed over jona, then to mayang. our bodies rubbed against each other and i have to say, we all enjoyed the friction that time. our bodies flushed after minutes of fondling and imitating what we saw on porn magazines and videos. it was my body’s first encounter with a woman’s flesh, and i was all filled with guilt, thinking that i could impregnate three women from the neighborhood.

i am a block away from my grandmother’s house. the bleeding gumamela flowers caught between the grills of our fence waved hello to me. as a carabao from the fields passed in front, i uttered a few prayers, took a deep breath and started to slowly accept the rush of future responsibilities banging in my head. parenthood, family planning, work, i tried to wallow those things all at once, thinking that it could have compensate for the scandal that i am about to bring my grandma.

after grandma’s soup hurt my tongue, the screams of tukne’s mother from the backyard alarmed my senses. i thought the hotness of the soup could silence me and keep me from spilling the incident to my grandma, but i was wrong.
tukne’s mother was in rage as she spoke with my grandma about the incident. the next thing i knew, i was placed in her own tribunal where questions about sex were hurled at me all at once.

i explained to her what happened, and fortunately, she released a deep sigh that signified my safety from her wrath. i told her we rub against each other’s bodies and that was it.

i never knew back then that it requires penetration to fertilize a woman. slowly, i was able to take in the ideas of responsibility and control. the fear and guilt i have experienced 12 years ago about sex and impregnating a woman taught me a lot about responsibility. my view of sex has evolved from pure imitation of porn, to lust, to passion then to responsible parenthood.

a pregnant woman brings joy to settled couples, but it often brings miseries to adolescents who are victims of their uncontrolled rage of hormones.