It’s black or ulikba in Tagalog, darker than the beige butiki (lizards) you see on the ceilings of almost every home in the Philippines. And it’s not my pet. No, it lives in the cabinet in the corner of my kitchen, the one where I keep things I don’t need — the gigantic pot I use for cooking only at Christmas, old wine bottles, there’s no sunlight there at all. Maybe that’s why it’s so dark. Sunlight bleaches clothes and maybe lizards.
Apparently it wanders because in the morning I find its droppings in my kitchen sink. But one morning I opened my top drawer to get a coffee filter and there it was frozen in shock. I saw it jump out of its skin then disappear into the depths. I screamed, okay, not a long drawn out scream like they do on TV when they see an axe murderer. Maybe just a yelp but I was scared nonetheless and slammed the drawer shut. But I needed the coffee filter for my morning cup.
So I calmed down a bit then opened the drawer again. It didn’t leave a trace, no tail moving on its own, and suddenly I was filled with gratitude. Maybe — and that’s a very slim maybe — we can become very discreet friends. Friends who don’t say hello. Friends who only stay out of each other’s way. I prowl around during the day and it prowls around at night. At the first sign of light it should retire to its home. Our paths never should meet.
I used the word should, a word I do not like. I don’t like anyone telling me what I should or should not do. But in the case of this tiny black monster I am emphatic about should and should not. I apologize but I find lizards absolutely creepy. It all began I think when I was 10 or 11 years old sitting on my grandmother’s terrace with my oldest male cousin, Toto. I saw a weird-looking lizard. It had two heads — one where the head should be and that head had eyes and the other where the tail should be — that had no eyes. And unlike normal lizards that scurried away when you came near, this freak was frozen in its place. Now I think it might even have been dead.
Well, I should have known better because Toto got hold of a tissue, picked up the freak lizard and chased me with it. I was so scared I went into the nearest bathroom and ran into a corner near the sink. I found myself hysterical there, crying, sobbing, screaming. Toto opened the little window and threw the lizard in. In that precise moment my fear of lizards was born. I don’t remember how I got out of the bathroom. I just know no one saved me. I think my mother might have talked to me through the door and asked me to get out because I know I closed it with a barrel bolt and no one can open that from the outside.
From then on lizards and I were enemies. In my grandmother’s house then, we slept with mosquito nets so none of them dropped on me. But I remember when my grandson Julian was a baby, almost a year old. I absolutely adored him. He was like another baby boy to me (I just have one son). We lived in a duplex that was totally screened but we had a wild garden and there were always so many lizards clinging to the screens on the outside.
I would pick him up and dance with him. Then I would get a plastic ruler and put it in his hands. Guiding his hand with the flexible ruler we would go around the house hitting the lizards that clung to the outside of our second floor screens from inside the screens. They would fly into the night and Julian would collapse into peals of laughter. We loved doing that until one night we noticed there were no more lizards on the screens. They must have warned each other of the witch and her baby who hit them with a cold blunt tool and sent them flying into the night.
Julian is 20 years old now. My grandchildren are all old and not inclined to have babies. So I live alone and occasionally . . .
I tried to catch this ulikba with some sticky cardboard intended to catch flies that I bought on an adventure to Divisoria some time ago. It left a dropping on the border. It was sending me a message. You’ll never catch me. Well, I got the message.
Now every time I walk into my kitchen to get a filter I knock on the drawer first then count to three. No ulikba. A happy me.
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