Footnotes on Finding a Nuno sa Punso
COHORT 7
1 Nuno sa punso is a Filipino mythological creature that frequently makes appearances in cautionary tales by grandparents and other older relatives hailing from superstition-soaked provinces. These dwarf-like spirits are rumored2 to live in anthills or termite mounds, where they live in solitude. If they are interrupted, they will not hesitate to inflict ailments to those who disturb them. The words ‘nuno sa punso’ literally translate to ‘old man of the mound.’
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I 2found a3 dwarf spirit’s sacred home during the long, dreaded walk to my grandfather’s house, which was situated at the city’s edge. My parents were constantly around to drive me, yet today, they insisted they could not – fraying my endurance for this cross-city journey on foot. When I spied a fruit and flower-dappled garden five blocks away from my grandfather’s house, I took it as an omen to stop. My grandfather loved willing afternoons away in local gardens, claiming that the dwarf spirits that lived there kept him company. While I didn’t exactly believe in his tall tales, I did want something to regale him with if he was conscious when I arrived. I rooted around the garden’s shrubs, tangled my fingers through grass-twined weeds, and was finally about to give up when a small mound of dirt caught my eye. My heart jumped, and my stomach collapsed with relief. The mound could easily have been an anthill, but I knew I could just as easily call it a dwarf spirit’s sacred home, to make my grandfather smile. I parceled the little story in my head, ready to dress it up to delight, but it never reached him. As I turned away from the mound, my phone rang. My mother’s strangled sobs told me all I needed to know.
3 I found4 the dwarf spirit’s sacred home during the long, dreaded walk to my grandfather’s house. The tiny, enchanted friend supposedly kept my grandfather company since his grandchildren couldn’t stop by and do the same. While the guilt laced around this oft-used jab pushed me to walk faster, I couldn’t help but slow down once I neared the tiny community garden. It was my grandfather’s favorite place in all of the city – although I suspected he held it in such high esteem since it was one of the only public places that doctors permitted him to visit. I wandered beneath the rows of drooping trees, attempting to mimic my grandfather’s steps as he skirted the line between vivid fantasy and lackluster reality. The garden’s twisting path led me to the lot’s edge, where a fist-sized hill of soil sprouted. My eyes stung as I imagined my grandfather here, talking to a creature blended from passed-down fables and his imagination. An apology bobbed in my throat, ready to be released at the edge of his sickbed, but when my phone rang and my mother began to wail, I swallowed it down. The apology was never permitted to resurface.
4 I looked for the dwarf spirit’s sacred home during the long, dreaded walk to my grandfather’s house5. For the past eight years, he asserted that he’d been living on borrowed time, thanks to the dwarf spirit’s grace. My older cousins had argued that dwarf spirits only cursed people, particularly those who disrupted their solace by trampling on their sacred homes. “Ah, but they can be gracious creatures if you grant them silence,” my grandfather countered, biting a strawberry – a peace offering box from my cousins and me. “I’m living proof.” Scurrying through the garden, I wanted more than proof of the dwarf spirit’s existence. I also needed a promise that it was capable of extending greater graces towards my grandfather. I kept my feet light on the crunchy grass and my arms stiff at my sides. The loudest part of me reverberated inside – my heart, a frantic drumbeat. Still, I couldn’t help but sigh softly when my eyes landed on the small mound of dirt at the garden’s unkempt, vine-ridden edge. I hovered by the mound as closely as I could without shadowing it. My breaths escaped in stunted, quick puffs, and my eyes tracked the mound for the barest flicker of movement. None of that mattered because a few minutes later, the phone in my pocket rang. The tinny noise erased any hopes of the dwarf spirit coming up from the ground, and my mother’s words chased away any use for the dwarf spirit’s powers now.
5 It hadn’t been my grandfather’s house for a while6.
6 It hadn’t been my grandfather’s house for a long, long time. The convergence of house and hospital began eight years ago when he received his initial diagnosis. Clunky furniture was swapped out for maintenance machines. Bathrooms and staircases were retrofitted to prevent injuries. Trash was banished to the dirty kitchen, and the rest of the house gained an artificial, antiseptic scent. While my grandfather outlived each doctor’s gloomy prognosis, his house turned more clinical as his complications stacked up. My parents’ discussions on his declining health swelled, too – it was a topic that could be catalyzed from almost any stray thought or deep reflection. These discussions reached a head that morning, when my mother commanded me to go to my grandfather’s house straight after school. They couldn’t pick me up, she said, because they’d already be there – but my grandfather was doing fine. When I closed the front door and pressed my ear against it, I heard my mother mumble: “… take magic for him… through the day.” The entire day, I wondered how I7 could give my grandfather the magic he needed.
7 The dwarf spirit was the only one capable of giving my grandfather the magic he needed, so I trampled through the garden where my grandfather insisted it lived. Hearing my mother’s quiet, resigned words in the morning trapped me in a haze all day, where I tapped into the recesses of my mind for a solution, until old stories of the dwarf spirit jolted me into action. Once the final bell rang, dismissing us, I raced to the only place I knew my grandfather’s fate could be reversed. I trudged through the brambles, swiped at the obstructive branches, and ripped petals off blooming flowers. “Come out!” I yelled, my voice raw with desperate fury. I didn’t know if the dwarf spirit had a name or if my grandfather had one for it, so I elected to simply summon it with my scathing anger. “Come out, you coward!” The ground quaked underneath my heavy footsteps, and when I stomped on the dirt-laden mound, the circular top fractured. I pawed through the dwarf spirit’s dwelling place, dredging up decaying leaves and snapped twigs and rotten bits of fruit. Soil slipped beneath my fingernails, but I dug deeper. “There’s still time,” I whispered with anguish, attempting to coax the dwarf spirit from its sacred home because I believed it and its powers to be true8. A phone call interrupted my fervent excavation.
8 There was no powerful dwarf spirit, and there was no more time. My grandfather had taken his last breath seven minutes ago9.
9 It has been twelve years since my grandfather took his last breath. Sometimes, I visit the garden he spent many lonely afternoons in, where I watch the orange sky surrender to the darkness. Before I go, I water the patch of newly planted strawberries surrounding the hollow mound of soil. I can’t say that my grandfather was right to call it the dwarf spirit’s sacred home, but I also can’t say that he was wrong. On the day he died, I kicked the anthill. I kicked, and it cursed me with a sickness: an incurable heartache, a stain that can’t be cleansed.