Letters From the Outlands: Leilani Sitoy (April 19, 1966

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Leilani Sitoy (April 19, 1966 - November 18, 2007)

My sister Leilani (April 19, 1966 - November 18, 2007). At 20, a new B.S. Psychology graduate, she had it all figured out. Her little orange typewriter, the carefree smile, the movie star pose, the hand-lettered desk signs that read “Smoking Area” and “Silence: Writer at Work.” Her red t-shirt says “I’m an alcoholic. In case of emergency, give me a beer.” Her name in cut-out letters (hand-made as well) on the shelf behind her, and a Menudo collage by the window. Her little Post-its, her colored markers and her lighter carefully arranged before the typewriter.

The words on the large cowrie shell read “Golf Club.” These were her new barkada, her new friends; they liked to hang out at our house happily drinking. “Golf” was for “golf-golf-golf,” i.e. “gulp, gulp, gulp” which can sometimes sound like the same word in the Philippines. A few weeks before, she had taken a treasured photo album with the name of her old barkada, her group, on the front, stuffed the photos into an envelope, and replaced them with pictures of these new friends.

She left to take a master’s degree at the Ateneo de Manila the following semester. Manila – the sudden absence of community support, the different culture of that Catholic university, the urban fashions and the disquieting coexistence of extreme wealth with extreme poverty -- changed her. As these things go.

Our best and closest years were when we were young. Not young-young, but young teenagers, starting from when I was about 10 and she 13, up to when I was 15 and she 18. We had the fantasy world that I have written about previously. She had her imaginary boyfriend, and I had mine – in fact, she had tremendous influence on whom I chose to be with in there. Of course, in this alternate universe we were both exceedingly beautiful and irresistible, as were all the other girls who populated it (no female bullying, no nasty put-downs). We were not sisters, but distant cousins – I think I must have been an embarrassment for her, with my glasses and my awkwardness and my bad Cebuano. And incidentally, we were war orphans, because in a fantasy world, parents tend to complicate things.

We developed this world through stories and pictures. When people interview me about my published work and influences, they always ask, “Who is your father? What is his occupation?” Rarely, “Who are your parents? Who is your mother?” and never “Do you have any siblings?” They probably think I formed my worldview reading the Bible and Dickens at my father’s knee.

My sister never got a chance to get interviewed for her published work, because she stopped writing fiction in her junior year at college, at around the time she began to work seriously on her grades. She ultimately graduated Magna Cum Laude at Silliman University. As far as I know, up to the time of her death she never wrote fiction again, although when I was a lifestyle editor around 1997, I pestered her to write a few pieces for my page. She complied, and the work was (of course) brilliant and funny. My editor asked for more, but Lani declined; the first baby had come; she had no time. If she drew at all, it was chubby, pleasant little cartoons of her co-workers, for birthdays and such.

We fell out, actually, nearly overnight when I was 15, and really did not reconcile until a few weeks before she died, which is a weird thought, considering there are studio photographs of our grinning selves, and me and her daughters playing. But our relationship was fraught. (Come to think of it, the only boyfriend of mine she’d really approved of was “Paolo”, and he was a jointly created fantasy in the aftermath of a movie we’d seen. When I fell in love with another movie boy but wanted to string “Paolo” along, she wrote a short novel about a man-made plague that killed off the new boy AND the entire world including herself, leaving “Paolo” and my character along with two or three others, presumably with the task of repopulating the earth).

So why am I remembering this now, why am I writing this now? Especially since it is not the hagiography we are expected to write of a loved one who has died? Because I cannot find her anywhere but within my memories and a sad boxful of notebooks at the bottom of a closet. She died before Facebook, before Pinterest. When I Google her name, the only things that come up are the brief tributes I posted shortly after she left.