The couple thought that the grandmother loved her grandchildren and asked to sleep with them every night, until one day while they were at work, they heard shocking news. They couldn’t believe that a grandmother could do that to her own grandchildren…
Arman Dela Cruz and Lia Santos live in Barangay Kamuning, Quezon City. After more than 10 years of marriage, they finally had children. This time, God blessed them with twin girls. Everyone who saw them said, “It’s truly a blessing from God. The whole family is so bright.” Since having grandchildren, Lia’s mother-in-law—Mrs. Rosario, who neighbors often call Lola Sari—has been very indulgent. Every night, she asked to let the two children sleep in her room to help look after them, saying that the “young couple” could rest. Thinking that she was old and truly loved her grandchildren, Arman and Lia felt reassured and even secretly grateful.

Until one day, while they were both at work, Lia’s phone rang. On the other end of the line was Aling Nena, the panic-stricken kapitbahay:

“Come back now, there’s something big going on with the kids… Lola Sari… you did something unbelievable!”

Arman and Lia turned pale, quickly took a tricycle home. As soon as they entered, the scene before their eyes left them speechless: two little girls were screaming, their faces purple with fear. A few neighbors rushed in to stop them, otherwise… who knows what would have happened.

It turned out that Lola Sari had been carrying jealousy and disappointment in her heart for a long time and she had…

She had hoped to have apo lalaki—a grandson to “continue the family line.” Seeing that both of them were girls, she continued to pamper them on the surface, but inside she was frustrated. The nights of “asking to sleep together” were actually for her to vent her frustration, to find fault, and to torment her grandchildren.

That day, in a fit of rage and anger, she did something that shocked the whole neighborhood. Luckily, the kapitbahays were alert, heard the strange noise, and rushed over in time.

Looking at their two little daughters Maya and Luna, Arman and Lia were both scared and in pain: the person they trusted the most was the one who acted the most cruelly. The whole family fell into tragedy: on one side was the love of blood, on the other side was the instinct to protect their children.

The lingering question haunted them and the whole Kamuning neighborhood:

“How could you do that to your own family’s own blood…?”

The Night Kamuning Didn’t Sleep

The hallway smells faintly of rubbing alcohol and old paint. Lia sits on the vinyl bench with Maya against her shoulder and Luna in her lap, both girls hiccupping through the tail end of their cries. Arman paces by the Women and Children Protection Desk, talking to the officer in a low voice that still trembles at the edges.

“They’re stable,” the ER resident had said a few minutes earlier, careful and calm. “No lasting physical injury that we can see. Some minor bruising. They’ll need rest—and you, too.” He’d added a note for a social worker and the WCPD, because that’s what the checklist demands when babies arrive with neighbors instead of lullabies.

Outside, Kamuning is the same city it was at noon—tricycles buzzing, fishball smoke curling up to the uneven sky—yet somehow it feels different, like the barangay has been tilted a few degrees and everything valuable is rolling toward the brink.

Aling Nena waits by the door, arms folded tight over her duster. She was the first to hear the twins’ frantic wails, the first to rush in and shout for help. “Anak,” she tells Lia, pressing a warm palm to her back, “you did right to bring them. Paper first, tears later.”

Paper. Lia nods. Paper is how you gather yourself when your heart is running in circles—forms for the hospital, a blotter at the barangay hall, a statement at the WCPD. Paper is how you tell the world: this happened to my children; this will not happen again.

Arman returns with a printed checklist and eyes that can’t decide where to land. “The officer says we can file the report tonight,” he says. “They’ll forward to the station and call DSWD in the morning.” He swallows. “They also asked if we want a protection order.”

The words are practical, sturdy, like the tanod’s bamboo baton hanging on a nail at the barangay hall. But when Arman says “protection order,” Lia sees their home: the tiny framed wedding photo, the rose curtains, the crib with a cloud-patterned sheet. She also sees the door they forget to lock sometimes, because you never think the danger will knock from the inside.

“File it,” Lia says, her voice surprising in its steadiness. “File everything.”

The story keeps replaying, no matter how many times Lia blinks. Lola Sari’s voice—so often a coo, a hum, a soft “apo, apo”—had been a different instrument entirely when the neighbors pushed her bedroom door open. Sharp. Irrational. A thunder that doesn’t respect walls. The twins were red-faced, breath snagging on sobs; the pillow on the floor looked guilty though it was only cotton. The room smelled of baby powder and something else—resentment that had been aired nightly like linen.

Now, in this cold bright place, Lia finally lets herself ask the question that’s been circling like a moth: Why?

The answer arrives in pieces as the night unspools.

First, from the nurse who used to buy bananas from the same sidewalk stall as Lola Sari. “She talks about wanting a boy,” the nurse whispers, privacy curtain half-drawn. “Always a boy to carry the name. You know how the old ones can be.”

Then, from Arman’s phone, where Tita Mercy’s message crackles anxious and defensive: Your mother is old. She didn’t mean it. Don’t shame the family. Come home and talk first.

Shame. As if shame were the urgent variable, not the tiny twin heartbeats that had sped like runaway drums.

And then the final piece—when the WCPD officer, a woman with kind eyes and a crisp ponytail, returns with her notepad. “Your mother-in-law said she lost a son,” the officer reports gently. “Not a child—she miscarried, late, years ago. Her husband blamed her. After he died, the words stayed. Sometimes grief comes out wrong.” She squeezes her pen. “I’m not excusing. I’m explaining. You are the parents. You choose what safe looks like.”

Safe. Lia breathes the word in and out until it stops sounding like a wish and starts sounding like a plan.

They walk the short block to the barangay hall, Kamuning mostly asleep except for the sari-sari store that never really closes. The tanod on duty takes their statements, spelling Lia’s last name the way she says it and not the way it’s often guessed. Arman’s hand shakes when he signs; when Lia signs, hers does not.

Inside the hall, it smells like floor wax and leftover coffee. The captain is called from his house next door; he arrives in slippers and serious eyes. “Children first,” he says, the best four syllables Lia has heard all week.

They decide—no more nights at Lola Sari’s. No unsupervised visits. The barangay issues a written agreement to that effect while their police report moves forward. The tanod volunteers to pass by the house every hour until morning, just to make sure tempers don’t invent excuses.

When they step back into the street, the air is softer. Maybe the night approves of people who finally pick a side.

At home, Aling Nena has left a pot of lugaw on the stove and a note on a paper towel: Feed the babies, then feed yourselves. I’m just next door if you need me. In another corner of the kitchen, a rosary hangs from a thumbtack. It wasn’t there in the morning.

Arman braces both hands on the sink and bows his head. It takes a long time before he says, “I’m sorry.” He turns to Lia, cheeks wet now. “For not seeing it. For wanting to believe the best. For asking you to trust a door I should have checked.”

Lia sets the bottle down and reaches for him with the same hands that steadied her daughters. “We see it now,” she says. “And we won’t unsee it.”

The morning draws a fine line under the night. A DSWD social worker arrives with a folder and a voice like a good teacher’s, firm but kind. She asks questions about routines and support. She notes the neighbors who helped, the nurse’s observations, the barangay captain’s statement.

“What do you want to happen next?” she asks finally.

Lia looks at the crib, at the faint imprint of two small bodies who just learned the world can be loud and then gentle again. “I want them to sleep and wake without flinching,” she says. “I want them to grow up knowing ‘lola’ means stories and merienda, not fear. And I want our boundaries to be a locked gate, not a polite ribbon.”

The social worker nods. “Then here’s the path.” She outlines it: continued monitoring, a formal case file, counseling referrals—one for the young family, one for Lola Sari if she’ll come. A recommendation to the family court for a protection order with clear conditions. Supervised visits later, if—and only if—the professionals believe safety isn’t a coin toss.

Arman flinches at the word “court,” and Lia sees the boy in him who once lined up for roll call in a schoolyard and wanted everyone to get a gold star. He wipes his eyes again. “I’ll tell her,” he says, voice low. “I’ll tell my mother it’s this or nothing.”

“Try,” the social worker says. “But remember: trying doesn’t mean surrendering your children’s safety.”

He meets his mother in the front yard because the house itself feels too tender for first drafts. The tanod waits at the corner, not intrusive, just present.

Lola Sari looks smaller than she did last night, as if anger had been a coat she shrugged out of and forgot how to put back on. Her hair is flattened where it met the pillow she did not sleep on. When she lifts her face, Arman can still see his childhood—the woman who wrapped leftover rice in a towel to keep it warm, who saved for his school shoes, who cheered for him under a plastic umbrella at intrams.

“Ma,” he says, and the syllable is both anchor and wave.

“What did they make you sign?” she asks, eyes darting toward the window where the twin mobile hangs. “What did they put in your head?”

Arman shakes his own. “Nobody put anything,” he answers, quiet but absolute. “We saw what we saw. We heard what we heard. We won’t risk it again.”

She flinches, then straightens. “A house without a son—” she begins, and Arman closes his eyes because he already knows the line.

When he opens them, he doesn’t counter with a lecture or a law. He points to the door. “Behind that wood are two children who will carry my name the way names should be carried—in kindness. If you want to be part of that, there will be rules. If you can’t, we will love you from far away.”

For a heartbeat, it seems like she might step forward, ask for the rules, take them like medicine and swallow. But her mouth hardens. “You shame me,” she says, and the old wound between her and the dead man who blamed her bleeds again. “You choose your wife over your mother.”

Arman doesn’t look away. “I choose my children,” he says. “I choose what’s right.”

She leaves without slamming the gate. The silence she leaves behind is worse than noise.

Days become a careful choreography. No one opens the door without looking. The twins return to their soft babble, their fists learning the shape of the air; sometimes they startle at a sudden clang from the street, but the recovery is quicker now. Lia keeps a small notebook where she writes ordinary miracles: Maya smiled at the spoon today. Luna slept for two hours straight. We laughed at the same silly commercial.

At night, the barangay tanod still passes on his rounds, tapping the baton once against the post like a metronome for a neighborhood trying to find its beat again. Aling Nena drops off banana cue on Thursdays. The WCPD officer calls to check in. The social worker schedules counseling.

And then—a week after the night Kamuning did not sleep—there’s a soft knock at the door. Arman looks through the peephole. He opens it only halfway.

It’s Tita Mercy, eyes red, hands clasped around a plastic container of ginataang bilo-bilo. “I came alone,” she says quickly. “No drama. Just… please hear me.” She breathes. “Ma wants to see the babies. She says she’ll accept your conditions. She says she’ll do the counseling. She says she’ll apologize.”

Lia stands very still. She has rehearsed this moment in her head a dozen times, picturing speeches like small shields. But now that it’s real, something quieter rises in her—something like a prayer with rules attached.

“Not today,” she says. “Maybe not next week. We’ll talk to the counselor about a plan. Visits will be at the barangay hall, and only if everyone agrees it’s safe. No ‘maybe,’ no ‘just for a minute.’”

Tita Mercy nods, tears freed by the relief of clarity. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

As she steps away, she turns back. “Lia,” she adds, voice low, “I was wrong to say shame. Thank you for doing what I was too scared to do.”

When the door closes, Arman leans his forehead against it. “We’re not cruel,” he whispers, as if to the wood itself. “We’re careful.”

Lia threads her fingers through his. “Careful is love with a spine,” she says. “We’re learning.”

Behind them, Maya laughs in her sleep, a sound like a tiny bell. Luna’s hand pats the mattress, searching for her sister’s warmth and finding it.

Lia lifts her notebook and writes one more line: We chose the hard thing, and the house stayed standing.

Outside, Kamuning exhales. Morning light spills across the street like a fresh page.