“Come with me, little Bee.” Lolo Sebyo dusts dirt off my clothes and tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “We still have about thirty minutes before the moon arrives. Magic is tricky to use in the moonlight.”
I follow Lolo Sebyo to his potion lab with Kidlat trotting behind me. “For what po, Lolo?”
My grandfather gives me a kind smile. “You shall see.”
Lolo Sebyo’s potion lab is like a cross between an apothecary and a library. Well, I’ve never been to an apothecary, but it’s how I imagine it to be. Behind a long wooden table, rows upon rows of multicolored bottles line one side of the room. The other side is full of books. Ancient books. Like, books that are so old, they were around even before the 1896 Philippine Revolution.
I’m not kidding. Lolo Sebyo said our ancestors fled from Pampanga to Isla Pag-Ibig during the Spanish era to escape the church’s arbularyo purge. He doesn’t know when exactly, but for sure it was way before Filipinos decided they had enough of Spain’s oppressive regime.
The Spanish called our family heretics. Which was funny, considering they merged Christianity with the magical practices of pre-colonial tribes to make us accept their religion.
Colonizers are weird.
“Are we going to make a potion?” I ask, setting Kidlat down on the floor. He bounces straight for Lolo’s books. “But it’s Friday night!”
“That is true.” Lolo Sebyo nods as he brings out ingredients from the cupboard. “I hope you do not mind having an extra lesson.”
“Of course not!” If it were up to me, I’d want arbularyo training every day. But it’s not, so I still go to regular school and train on Saturdays. As Lolo says, Arbularyos need to learn about the world they live in.
“Good.” Lolo Sebyo points at Kidlat, who’s sniffing the shelves with great interest. “Don’t let him lick my books, little Bee. Those are very, very rare! Can’t find them anywhere else on the island. No. These have been in the family since before Spain invaded the Philippines.”
Like I said, those books are old.
I grab Kidlat from behind. Most dogs might resist being carried like a baby, but not my good boy. He’s absolutely still as I carry him away.
“Put your dog down and come over here,” says my grandpa, waving me over. “And let the light in. I must finish this today before my patient comes.”
Lolo Sebyo likes to call the people who ask for his help “patients.” He says that in some places, an arbularyo is called a “witch doctor” instead of a faith healer. So, in some way, he’s also a doctor.
I head for the window near the table and open the black curtains. The glass is covered with thick black paper except for a small hole, where the dusk’s remaining sunlight streams in. The ray illuminates a clay pot on a portable stove in the middle of the table. It has a perfectly round bottom and a spread-out rim. A palayok.
Lolo Sebyo lights a blue candle. “Join me in prayer, my Bee.”
I clasp my hands together and lean in toward the palayok like Lolo does. He utters the protection chant and I whisper along with him. We ask the Lord to bless our brew.
My grandpa makes the sign of the cross, ending our prayer by telling God that we are offering everything to him. “Ang lahat ng ito ay alay namin sa inyo, Panginoon.”
I do the same and reach for the wooden ladle on the table.
“Not this time, my Bee.” Lolo’s hand covers mine. He gently takes the ladle from me. “You are too emotional at the moment. Even for an experienced arbularyo, it’s nearly impossible to balance magic and strong emotions when you’re making the brew. But I want you to watch. You will make your own potion tomorrow morning.”
My face falls as I take my pen and journal from under the table. See? This is what I was talking about. I’m not a very good arbularyo—which Claudine was nice enough to remind me of. Lolo Sebyo often reminds me to “balance magic and emotions.” I’ve been doing exactly that. I could feel the magic and emotions I let go and hold back are just right. I know the balance is spot-on.
But I still can’t brew anything correctly. It’s almost as if the magic itself doesn’t like me. It’s my birthright and yet it seems to intentionally not want to work well for me.
Sometimes I really wonder if Lolo Sebyo regrets agreeing to take me on as his apprentice. Or that he thinks I’m a horrible arbularyo but has no choice since Dad doesn’t do magic and Lolo needs someone to carry on the family tradition of potion making.
Lolo Sebyo combines all the ingredients in the palayok, dipping the wooden ladle as the mixture turns into a clear blue liquid. “We are making a Dose of Happiness for a patient who needs a little help getting through the weekend. First step is to stir the potion once clockwise, then immediately stir twice counterclockwise.”
The liquid turns opaque, like someone poured milk in it. The potion’s texture becomes thick and creamy like hot chocolate. But blue.
“Pretty!” I say, taking down notes. I love the color blue. It reminds me of the sea.
My grandfather returns my smile. “Now, very carefully, we will need to keep stirring the potion clockwise as we put in sage and peppermint.”
Lolo Sebyo tosses in a small bundle of the dried herbs. The potion hisses and melts the bundle. “Just some more stirring. A little faster, but still with care. Breathe in, breathe out. Here you will let the palayok channel your magic into the potion.”
The potion fizzles and hisses, then bluish smoke rises from it. The blue smoke smells like chocolate.
“Ohh!” I close my eyes, savoring the scent, and getting so absorbed in it that I almost forget to write down the last set of Lolo’s instructions. “That smells so good!”
“It’s done!” Lolo Sebyo turns off the stove and pours the potion into small bottles. “Can you help me make some labels? I will need a dozen for this batch.”
“A Dose of Happiness,” I mutter as I write the labels. I try to do a good job, forcing my handwriting into something better than my usual chicken scratch–like scrawl. Lolo Sebyo takes the stickers and puts them on the bottles full of blue liquid.
“That sounds like something that could cheer me up. Instant happiness!”
“Not quite.” Lolo Sebyo chuckles. “A Dose of Happiness is only a temporary cure for sadness, not meant as an answer to anyone’s problems. Quite similar to the medication for mood disorders, except this one addresses more than a person’s moods—it soothes the soul as well as the mind.”
My eyes land on a framed photograph on Lolo Sebyo’s table, the one of his late wife, my lola Toyang. I miss Lola Toyang, but not as much as Lolo Sebyo does. She was the love of his life. He was so sad when her breast cancer suddenly turned for the worse in March. Dad said the stress of seeing her suffer and being powerless to stop it must have caused Lolo’s stroke.
I used to think that Lolo Sebyo handled Lola Toyang’s death okay because he knew we would be moving in with him here on Isla Pag-Ibig. Or maybe he was just able to prepare better for her inevitable passing. But now that I know what a Dose of Happiness can do to a person … it makes me wonder if Lolo Sebyo ever uses his own magic on himself. “Magic can’t heal everything, can it?”
“No, it cannot heal everything. Like I said, it’s only a temporary fix. True healing must come from within the patient themselves.” Lolo Sebyo follows my gaze. He heaves a heavy sigh. “I tried to heal Toyang, but she didn’t want me to dabble with the complexities of magic that involve matters of life and death. If the person I wanted to heal rejected my magic, it would not work. Consent is what separates healing magic from self-serving magic. There are gray areas, but taking someone’s right to choose usually ends up with terrible consequences.”
“I see.” An idea then pops into my head. “Lolo, if magic can make someone happy, can it make someone kind too? Like, stop them from being mean?”
“Is someone being mean to you in school?” Lolo Sebyo asks, frowning.
“No.” I feel guilty for lying, but I don’t want to get my grandfather involved. Who kno
ws what Claudine would do? She already threatened to endanger Mom’s job. Besides, it’s not 100 percent a lie. Claudine isn’t my classmate at school. She’s just part of my Bible study group. “I’m just curious.”
Well, that’s also true.
Lolo Sebyo still looks a bit suspicious, but I can see the worry leaving his face. “Yes, magic can bring out kindness, but it will only work properly on people who are already kind deep down and simply needed the push.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone who’s already kind need a push to be kind?”
“Perhaps they are so used to being unkind that being kind is hard.” Lolo Sebyo peers at me and tilts his head. “However, as an arbularyo, it is important to know when it’s unnecessary to use magic. We shouldn’t rely on magic all the time. For example, the kindness potion. You need to ask your client if they have first tried being kind to the other person. Kindness usually begets kindness. It’s only when all other options fail that we might consider using magic to coax their buried kindness out.”
I hide my disappointment. “But what if the other person just isn’t kind?”
“Then the magic won’t work properly, if at all.” Lolo Sebyo puts a filled potion bottle in a tiny bag. “In those cases, we—”
“PAPA! WHERE ARE YOU? I’M DYING HERE!”
I giggle as I watch Lolo Sebyo struggling not to roll his eyes.
“Rainier knows exactly where I am,” he says, shaking his head. “Your father is so melodramatic. Dinner rush won’t kill him.”
Before his stroke, Lolo Sebyo was also a tricycle driver aside from being an arbularyo. Lola Toyang ran the family’s eatery, the Bagayan Food Haus. It sells home-cooked meals to the fisherfolk and their families. Then Lola Toyang passed away, and now it’s my dad who manages the eatery with Lolo Sebyo helping him take orders during rush hours.
To be fair, I don’t think Lolo has any idea what to do in the canteen. He’s like Mom—they’re both terrible cooks.
“Clean the palayok before you leave, my Bee. And be quick! It seems we need all hands on deck at the canteen,” says Lolo Sebyo. He nods in Kidlat’s direction as he opens the door. “Watch over my granddaughter, you brave good boy.”
As I scrub the palayok, I think about Claudine and this kindness potion Lolo Sebyo mentioned. Could it be that she is just used to being unkind and simply needs a little prodding? It’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s worth a try.
One thing I like about Isla Pag-Ibig is being able to walk home with Kidlat during the week. I’ll take a tricycle from school to Nanay Dadang’s, where he patiently waits for me. We’ll walk the remaining kilometer going home together. If I have extra allowance money, like today, we munch on ice candies during our journey.
I could never do something like this when we still lived in Manila. The house we rented there was in a not-so-pleasant neighborhood. For my safety, Mom accompanied me on the way to school and going home. Instead of tall coconut trees lining a dirt road, we’d have to go past street vendors hawking pirated wares and cheap knockoffs. There, we heard police sirens from antidrug operations. But here, there’s only the soft trickling of the roadside creek and the occasional roar of a tricycle’s motorcycle engine.
“Hey, good boy!” I hurry to meet my dog after school on Monday. As usual, he’s sitting patiently at the store. On either side of him are two sleeping Muscovy ducks. The ducks are so used to seeing people come up to the general store that they barely budge when I come bounding down.
“Jolina Beatrice!” A woman’s high-pitched voice chirps from behind the counter—Nanay Dadang’s. She emerges from a cluster of hanging potato chip bags and sampler-sized shampoos. “You’re late. Your dog has been waiting for you for thirty minutes. Wouldn’t move even when I told it to go home.”
“Hi, Nanay Dadang. Thanks for letting him stay.” I greet the old lady, bringing out a couple of ten-peso coins. This is another thing I love about moving to a rural town. Everyone knows everyone else. I haven’t been here long, and yet Nanay Dadang already treats Kidlat and me like family. “Can I have some ice candies please? Chocolate for me, sugar-free papaya for the pup.”
“Ay! Your grandfather will have my head if he finds out I’ve been selling you ice candies.” Nanay Dadang sells me the ice candies anyway. “Here, have another chocolate. I know you love them. And some mineral water. You have a long walk going home. You live in a canteen and yet you are still so thin!”
I’m used to Nanay Dadang’s unflattering comments. I know better than to answer back in a disrespectful way.
“Thank you.” I tear the plastic off the tip of the homemade ice candy and take a bite. Yum. So chocolatey! “It’s genetic po. I got my thinness from Mom.”
“Sus!” Nanay Dadang waves her hand. “Science-schmience. In my day, we just ate a lot. Worked a lot too.”
“Can I also buy a mobile load?” I give her another wad of bills. “Just fifty pesos po.”
Nanay Dadang switches to complaining about technology. But just like with the ice candies, she still sells me a prepaid load. “Say hello to your grandfather for me! You children nowadays do nothing but play those things on your phone—”
“Hi, Nanay Dadang!” an all-too-familiar voice chirps behind me.
Ugh. I groan inwardly as I unwrap Kidlat’s papaya ice candy and hand it to him.
Claudine. She wasn’t at Bible study yesterday (which I was happy about). But now here she is again, like there’s just no way to escape her.
“Oh, hello, dear,” Nanay Dadang greets back. She pokes her head out of the sari-sari store’s small window. “That looks dangerous. What do you call that thing? Should you even be riding that?”
I stifle a giggle, stuffing my mouth with chocolate ice candy so I don’t need to say anything. Nanay Dadang looks like Lola Sebyo’s chicken with its head poking out of its cage.
“It’s an electric scooter. An e-scooter,” Claudine answers with a grin. Her eyes meet mine briefly, and I can see them twinkle. She must be thinking the same thing of Nanay Dadang. “It’s perfectly safe. You know how Mommy is—she’d never let me anywhere near anything dangerous. May I have a bottle of water and a pack of yema balls, please?”
I might be wrong about her. Maybe Claudine really is kind, deep inside. And it looks like she’s in a good mood today.
“Here you go, anak,” Nanay Dadang says, referring to Claudine as her child. “Do you want anything else?”
“I’m okay.” Claudine parks her electric scooter by the store’s wooden benches. I’ve always wanted one of those but they’re too expensive. Claudine downs the mineral water in one gulp. She removes the colored wrapper from the yema and pops into her mouth the sweet, custard-like candy encased in a crunchy, caramel shell.
“Do you know Jolina?” Nanay Dadang’s face lights up. “She’s Sunshine Bagayan’s daughter.”
“Opo.” Claudine nods as she pays for her bottled water. She eats another yema ball. “Sunshine is a receptionist trainee at my mommy’s resort.”
I purse my lips. Never mind. Maybe she’s not so nice, after all.
I’m not sure if it’s the fact that Claudine calls my mother by her first name. Or the fact that she just implied again that my family is beneath her. Or both. Either way, Claudine is getting on my nerves once more—even after I promised myself I wouldn’t let her. Being kind to a person like this is next to impossible.
It’s time for me to leave before I say anything mean.
“Have to go. Bye, Nanay Dadang!” I jog after my dog, who’s already halfway down the dirt road. He only slows down when Nanay Dadang and Claudine can’t possibly see us anymore.
“Hey, wait up!”
Kidlat and I turn around and find Claudine riding her e-scooter toward us. She slams the breaks, showering my shoes with tiny pebbles.
“Hi—”
“Why do you have to be so rude to Nanay Dadang?” Claudine keeps her left hand on the scooter while placing the other one on her hip.
�
�Rude? Me?” Seriously? She thinks I was the rude one? “You were rude about my mom.”
“I wasn’t,” insists Claudine. Her eyes narrow. “Nanay Dadang just asked me if I knew you’re her daughter. She didn’t know Sunshine works at Mommy’s resort.”
I’m trying not to let my temper get the best of me, but Claudine is making it really, really hard. “Please stop calling my mother by her first name. She’s older than you. In Manila, we don’t call adults by their first names. I would think you should know better.”
“Argh!” Claudine pulls on her hair, letting her scooter fall to the ground. “Manila, Manila, Manila. I am so tired of hearing you say you came from Manila. Just stop it already!”
Claudine’s outburst startles Kidlat. He lets out a low growl as he presses against my leg protectively.
“Shh.” I hush my dog, taking deep breaths to calm my racing heart. I totally get Kidlat’s anger—I have to leave now before I say anything I’ll regret later on. Mom’s job depends on it.
I spy a dirt path near the creek—a trail that leads straight to our village, Barangay San Pedro. A trail where Claudine can’t follow us with her expensive scooter. “We’re going home.”
“For your information, I called your mother Tita Sunshine when we first met,” Claudine calls behind my back. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I think I hear a hint of desperation in her voice. “She’s the one who insisted I call her Sunshine. Ask her if you don’t believe me.”
Yeah, right. Mom is the one who taught me about using honorifics to show respect for our elders. Whether it’s someone really old like Lolo Sebyo, or someone just a few years older than me—they deserve to be treated and referred to with respect.
This girl doesn’t have a shred of kindness. She keeps making excuses to pick a fight. She wants me to say something mean so she can go running to her mother and get my mom fired.
Sugar and Spite Page 2