Very Superstitious

"When you believe in things you don't understand
Then you suffer..."
                    ~ Stevie Wonder



We were studying one weekend at home
for a test on the national hero, Rizal— 
he who had learned fencing, over a dozen 
languages, enough medicine to perform 
cataract surgery on his own mother, and
written two novels to inflame a people's 
revolution that toppled the Spanish colonial 
regime. On the eve of his execution in 1896, 
he wrote a long poem which his sisters smuggled 
out of his cell in a cocinilla: fourteen stanzas, 
each with five lines. He called it his last 
farewell— Mi último adiós. We had to memorize 
at least half of it. It was so hot, and we 
were tired of memorizing, so we thought 
of going to the corner store to buy more 
snacks. With a dramatic flourish, I called out, "Mi
último adiós!"— which made my mother and aunt, 
making dinner in the kitchen, drop whatever they 
were holding and shriek— Take that back, 
take it back, don't you ever say that again!