THE WHIPPING BOY

D.J SERRANO’S POV

“I’m going home, Lalanita,” he heard her say to his grandmother with a measure of familiarity that surprised him. “Both of your grandsons are crazy…” she forced herself to smile and speak more calmly out of respect to Lalanita, who had patronized Emilio’s Kitchen for as long as it had been open. “Besides, my mother would be worried about me right now. Get better soon, D.J!” Her forced smile slid off her face as her gaze clashed with Enrique’s assessing eyes. “See you later, Mr. Serrano!”

“Hmm,” his brother grunted like the antisocial human being he was.

Emmy rolled her eyes at him, and then she was out of the room. D.J couldn’t help smiling at the interaction between both of them, as Lalanita said, “Oh, I wish she could stay. Emmy is such a good girl! Thank God she brought D.J to the hospital and called us. And she even stayed.”

This was part of the reason why he’d been so drawn to Emmy from the start, all those years ago; something about her seriousness reminded him of his brother. Also, she was exactly the kind of person his father would have killed to have as a child instead of him. Right from birth, D.J had been too “weak” for Enrique Serrano Snr. He was as easygoing and softhearted as his mother, with none of Rico’s natural killer instincts.

“It was the least she could do,” Rico said almost grumpily. “After all, he fainted in her restaurant, didn’t he?”

Early on, his father had decided that rather than trying to toughen him up, he’d simply use him as a tool to keep Rico in line. That was why whenever Rico failed as a child, Daniel was usually punished as well. That was why his earliest memory was about being locked in the closet as their father tried to transform Rico into a piano prodigy.

Then, Rico would perform on the grand piano at the soirees their father used to force their mother to host, and while everybody’s attention was fixed on the boy playing hauntingly beautiful keys, Enrique Snr. would usually be standing somewhere in Rico’s line of sight, with his hand on D.J’s small shoulders. Others would see a loving father’s warm touch.

But only those in the family knew that it was a veiled threat: “If you mess up and embarrass me in front of all these people, Rico, your little brother will pay for it.” That was what his father’s eyes said, and that was exactly what would happen on the rare occasions that Rico made a mistake, no matter how small.

Later in the dead of the night, after all the guests had gone and their screams and shouts had died down, Rico would apologize to him over and over again, as the bruises formed on his body. Later, when Rico became a flawless piano player–the prodigy their father had always wanted, winning classical music awards left, right, and center – by the age of fifteen, their father would preen and boast right after Rico received his awards, and in the car, he’d say, “The Europeans had the right idea when they came up with the concept of The Whipping Boy. Before you were born, very little would convince Rico to take up the piano. No matter how much I punished him, even when I punished your mother. He’d just be…” He’d trail off shaking his head in disappointment. “But I didn’t give up. I knew he had it in him, he obviously liked it but he was just not motivated to be the best he could be. To be a lion like me. But as soon as your mother became pregnant with you, I could get him to behave in ways I never even dreamed. And when you were born, ha! The moment you blinked your little brown eyes and smiled at him, I knew what I had to do. And now I see the proof.” He’d grin at whatever trophy Rico had just received, and say, “Indeed, it is better to beat a dog before a lion.”

As the second son to a man like Enrique Serrano Snr. D.J knew that his life was a very specific kind of hell that was meant to make the flames of his brother’s own burn even hotter. He was the spare, the whipping boy, the promise and the threat. For better or worse, he and his mother were Rico’s hostages, and Enrique Snr. used them to mold Rico into the perfect son. It was easy enough, Rico was already a highly skilled and resourceful person. He was already smart, studious and gifted from the day he was born. But without them, maybe he would have been a much happier person.

Now, he interrupted D.J’s cloudy thoughts. “What’s the matter, D.J? What are you thinking about? Would you like some water?”

“NO!” D.J shouted. He didn’t want to see his brother’s ghosts. He wasn’t ready yet. He wasn’t ready to see their mother. ‘But what if the ghost attached to Rico wasn’t Mom,’ a tiny voice whispered in his ear. ‘What if it’s his daughter? The one he still didn’t know about?’

And right then and there, D.J wondered if he was forever destined to be a source of his brother’s pain. “Rico, I have to tell you something, well a few things but this comes first…me and Lalanita. I just found out, and she didn’t know how to tell you so don’t be angry, okay?”

“What is it, Daniel?” His brother’s eyes searched his own curiously, with concern. “Is it the reason why you fainted?”

“Well, no. There’s something else, something I just remembered. But this comes first.” He took in a deep breath. “It’s about Veronica.”

“Oh, D.J! Now is not the time-”

“Lalanita, we need to tell him.”

Rico looked at their grandmother, and glanced back at him. “Tell me what?”

“Well, I don’t know the full story…I don’t understand it but, Rico, Veronica is right here in Cebu. She’s a teacher at my new school-”

“Wait,” Rico raised a hand to stop him. “What- You’ve never met Veronica before, so how do you know it’s her?”

“I told him,” their grandmother spoke softly, her resolve finally shining through. “I told him the truth your mother didn’t want to tell you-”

“Okay…” Rico’s eyes tightened. “So, she’s here, big deal. What does it have to do with us? With why you fainted?”

D.J heard it in his voice, the way his brother was trying to pass Veronica’s return off as something lighthearted and simple. But he knew Rico never took matters of the heart lightly. Oh, it was all fine and dandy when it had to do with the hearts of the countless women he had had over the years since Veronica. But none of them had ever mattered to him the way she did. Enrique Serrano II never played with the matters of his own heart. And so, because D.J knew his brother, he knew that somewhere beneath that false nonchalant attitude he was trying to put on, Rico was probably brewing a twisted plan to make Veronica’s life a living hell. Now that she had turned up, after all these years, Rico would finally make her pay.

But there was something else his brother had to know first.

“She didn’t abort your baby.”

His words were spoken softly, but they’d landed with as much impact as an atomic bomb.

“What?”

“She gave birth to your child. She only lied to you so that Dad would believe had broken up with you, and leave her alone.”

“D.J…do you know what the hell you’re saying?” Enrique’s eyes widened in shock. “Or did you hit your head too hard when you fell? We’re talking about Veronica here! The girl that left me because our father put her through hell! How on earth would you know anything about her?”

“Because I told him!” Lalanita shouted now, with tears in her eyes. “I told him, Rico. Gwen, your mother, she came to visit you in university, remember? When Veronica and you first started dating. You introduced her as your friend, but your mother knew. You were so happy, and she knew. But she knew how your father would react, so she reached out to Veronica in secret and told her to call her if she was ever in trouble. When Veronica got pregnant suddenly, she called your mother and the two of them hatched a plan. Veronica would take your father’s money and break up with you, lie that she’d aborted the baby and disappear. She changed her name and went to America, where it was safe. All was well. She kept in touch with your mother, but after a few years there was a fire in the apartment they lived in, and Gwenie…Gweneth…the baby girl she named after your mother…she didn’t make it out in time. It was horrible, Rico. So horrible. Veronica didn’t want to live anymore, so your mother sent her to live with us, so that we could watch over her. This was five years ago.”

Enrique was silent for a full minute. “When…When Lolo Juan passed away, ” he said hoarsely. “She was here?”