White Turtle

by Merlinda Bobis

  Five years ago, Pilar saw through a hole on the wall, how the conspiracy unfolded, how her own mother had wrenched the hairless rat out of her friend, how the sheets and the basin of water turned red, and how the lovely Carmen grew very pale and still on a cushion of luxurious hair, the longest in the village. Then all life seemed to have gathered around the bald latecomer. And from then on, even after the village had exhausted all speculations about its unknown father, the midwife and the dead girl’s then-ailing mother spoke only in whispers—

  We will remember only in our hearts, but this baby must not know. Best to keep the poor dear out of it, best to keep silent, then the rest of Iraya will hush its malicious murmurings. And, please, you will stay here and become her family, the new grandmother pleaded. You, Dulce, will be her new mother. And this, my father’s house, is now your own home. A year later, the old woman died, and Dulce promised to love the orphan as much as her own children. But even more, even more, Pilar has always believed. Ay, Mamay has never loved more passionately.

  “Brother, put me down, please, Brotheeeeeer!” The child shrieks as the rope is tugged sharply and she’s jolted farther up, her back hitting the great trunk.

  “I’m getting her down now, whatever you say,” Bolodoy begins to loosen the rope—

  “You fighting me, ha? Ha?” Pilar viciously elbows him and pulls the rope even harder.

  Eya is crying and kicking about, imploring the pair below.

  “You’re foolish and mean and—why are you so—so—” He grasps her wrist, trying to get her hand off the rope.

  “Let go! I said, let go—lechero ka!” She bites his hand.

  “Aray ko poo!” He lets go and punches her—“Lintian ka—may the lightning strike you!”

  She hits him back.

  The rope breaks free and a screaming angel falls from the sky.

  Thick, black eyebrows that grow towards each other, as if about to meet. No doubt about it, the child is sarabaton —prone to meeting spirits, that’s why. And what curly lashes, and, if those eyes were open, I’d swear they’re light brown, as if she were mestiza, but, no, she’s too dark to be one—wonder who’s the father. Forehead broad, its tanned smoothness extending forever, till the back of the head. Bald, thus the purple bruise is obvious. The kiss of a bad spirit.

  The child moans, her breathing uneven again, as if she were chasing precious air. Pay Inyo imagines the tiny heart trying its hardest beneath the scrawny chest. He has seen birds breathe this way after a fatal blow from a slingshot.

  There are several novenas at his feet. Also, some piedra lumbre, white medicinal stones, herbs and the ashes of oliva which was blessed last Palm Sunday. Among his healing implements, the old man squats to prepare the red candle and the basin with water. He scans a tattered notebook of orasyones, his special incantations.

  He dare not look behind him. He has stopped meeting her eyes, since she called for him an hour ago, lest she betray the unspoken. But he senses her fear, as ample as herself, ascending the stairs of his vertebrae. His back is growing heavier, too heavy, it might collapse.

  “Her mother died here…” Tiya Dulce’s voice is tight; her singsong, off-key. “…this bed, my hands…”

  And I buried her, he almost adds, but cups water instead, whispers it a prayer then lets it trickle back into the basin.

  “But I took care of her child well…birth-ed her…” The midwife turns over a memory. “And loved her… I love my Eya…she’s mine now, you know…”

  “Mamay…” Pilar whispers behind the door. Her brother echoes her tone, hungry for reassurance.

  “Just stay there, both of you…” she tries to regain the old authority, the scolding attitude, but fails. “It will be all right, children…it will be…”

  “Let them in. I need help,” says the medicine man. His dolorous voice is so deep, as if drawn from his toes. “Come in, Pilar, Bolodoy…sit with me, you, too, Dulce… I need help.”

  Pilar sees her, so pale, even her scalp is pale, except for that purple. Her gaze must not leave that frail rise and fall, lest it stops—see, she’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive, she chants to herself, trying to echo the rhythm of the patient’s breathing. Of course, the holarawnd man can do everything, yes, make her better again—but what to tell him now? Ay, Bolodoy hit me, so I hit back, then —hush, not a word, no, don’t you tell on us, Bolodoy. Yes, it’s bad spirits, Pay Inyo, they’re up to their tricks, they’ve always been, you said, keeping her hair from growing like that, you know, because they don’t want her to be beautiful like her mother, and, Mamay, we were just playing and she climbed the fart-fart tree, I told her not to, Bolodoy, too, we told her, but up she went, she went and fell, just like that, when the bad spirits pushed her—

  “Where did you play this afternoon?” Pay Inyo has lighted the red candle.

  “Yard,” Bolodoy mumbles.

  “Which part?” He lets the candle wax drip on the water. A ripples of wishes.

  “Under the atut-atut and she climbed up and fell and that’s why—”

  “How could you let her, girl, you’re the older one, you’re supposed to take care of her, you stupid—you should have—” The surrogate mother is passing on a five-year-old guilt, that ultimate terror, so excruciating, it drives us to love. “My Eya, my poor child…my darling…”

  “Hush, Dulce, please—how, Pilar? How did it happen?” He scrutinises the wax hardening on the water, then murmurs an incantation. A ripple of fears.

  “Just fell.”

  “Did you see anything unusual around that tree? Any strange mounds of earth or some hovering insect, anything?”

  “No.” Both children answer hastily.

  The candle splutters a faint protest.

  “This, seen anything like this?” The medicine man points to the red wax floating on the water. In the candlelight, a splatter of coagulated blood or a red raft, oddly shaped—

  “The spirit, Dulce. Here, see this. It’s a female spirit, a young female spirit, a girl…”

  Bolodoy clutches his sister’s hand, uttering a choked cry.

  Pilar stares at the solid blob of red on the basin, what girl, it’s only wax, there’s no girl, what’s all the fuss, she’s all right, don’t be stupid, watch her chest, she’ll be all right, she’s alive, she’s alive, she’s—

  The rise and fall halts, abandoning the imposed rhythm, and the purple slowly spreads, the scalp breaking into sweat—

  Ay, my cruel God! Swallowing his despair, the holarawnd man begins to chant all the orasyones that he can remember, desperately leafing through his novenas, trying to find that lost magic, that stingy miracle, willing the heavens to open, to grant that secret, elusive grace, so small a plea, Saint Jude, tabi man, Santa Rita, have mercy on us!

  The Long Siesta as a Language Primer

  I, too, can love you

  in my dialect, you know,

  punctuated with cicadas

  and their eternal afternoons:

  “Mahal kita, mahal kita.”*

  * Filipino for “I love you, I love you”. Crooned by fourteen-year-old Che-che to her foreigner b.f. (boyfriend) Mr Shoji X, a fifty-year-old paper magnate with a secret logging concession in Palawan in the southern Philippines. Crooned with feeling—kilig to the bone he was*—at a five-star hotel suite on a long, hot afternoon, while he was dressing up to catch his plane back to X-landia.

  * Kilig. Filipino for “quiver”. Quiver to the bone. Street idiom meaning “very excited”. Mr Shoji X was kilig to the bone, Che-Che thought, as he watched her baby lips open and close over the syllables of native endearment, “mahal kita, mahal kita”, while he zipped up his pants. Che-che was humouring her b.f., who is truly madatung*, for a bigger tip.

  * Full of cash; rich. Local idiom referring to the well-heeled. Mr Shoji X, genuinely madatung and generous, too, always wore the most expensive Ballys. Scored in Europe. Che-che had a discerning eye. Not new to her trade, two years in business, and she was well trained. Aunty Dearest t
aught her to “look at the shoes, dearie, the shoes”. This beloved bugaw* was an expert. She could tell if the sole was not leather.

  * Term for “pimp”. Aunty Dearest had literally saved the girl from starvation, so the story runs around Ermita’s grapevine. She came to Manila after a devastating typhoon in her province. The storm had destroyed their hut after it claimed her mother’s life. Thank god, Aunty Dearest played surrogate Mama to the poor girl after she had found her scavenging in the dump beside Manila Bay. What tragic waste! Too beautiful to die among the garbage. It broke her heart, Aunty Dearest said. We must help each other, dear. She bought her three big Macs the first time they met. The bugaw was Che-che’s kababayan* after all.

  * From the root word “bayan” meaning “province”. Term addressed to one who comes from the same province as the speaker. Aunty Dearest’s and Che-che’s bayan is Laguna, not famous for its strong typhoons unlike other parts of the Philippines. But two years ago, the disaster struck. Che-che had to move to Manila, met her kababayan, and the rest is history. Che-che is naturally ma-L*, her colleagues believe, that’s why she has so many die-hard b.f.’s.

  * A shortened version of “malibog”. Literally means “with very active libido”; a way of saying “very horny”. “Che-che is ma-L”, so the chismis* goes among the young wards of Aunty Dearest. Che-che doesn’t mind though. Best advertisement, she says.

  * Meaning “gossip”. Derives from Spanish. Che-che doesn’t make chismis. She is not chismosa. Waste of time. Use mouth for profitable venture instead. But business that afternoon was not all that profitable. Her favourite b.f. was a disappointment, despite the fact that he is madatung and visits the Philippines every month, and lives in five-star hotels. He was not himself that afternoon. Her suki* was losing his golden touch.

  * Term for “regular customer”. The suki of all suki, this Mr Shoji X, Che-che winked conspiratorially at the bellboy in the lift. Generous, too, except this time when he had rushed out of their suite without handing her the usual tip. Got the standard pay, of course, but not the fat tip. He was running late, so he forgot. I’m just making habol* after my dues, you know, Che-che had to explain to the prim woman at the reception desk, as she tried to chase after him.

  * Literally means “to run after”. But Che-che had missed her b.f. by just a minute. The taxi limousine was now rolling down the exit ramp and reception was detaining her with questions. All because he was so praning* about losing face—we must never take the lift together, he had said. Look what happened now.

  * Filipino camp version of “paranoid”. Che-che was also getting praning as several front-of-house staff gathered around her, while the hotel security guard gripped her arms to keep her from making habol after the disappearing tail of the limousine. They were going to call the cops, because she was not legal. Imagine, Mr Shoji X had also forgotten to pay the desk fee, putang ina!*

  * Meaning “whore Mama!” You bad-mouthing me? The prim receptionist’s tone was deadly. Of course not! They never remember this face—me, a suki of this hotel, too! She handed her purse to the putang inang receptionist. Haay, there goes my merienda*, Che-che sighed.

  * Refers to an afternoon snack. After long siesta, no merienda, Che-che glowered at the setting sun of Manila Bay while clutching her empty purse. Above, the pink trail of a 747 was just beginning to crumble.

  The Kissing

  Gingered chicken in green papayas, smothered with coconut milk, never fails to keep the tongue moist long after the meal is over. So does slightly burnt sugar lodged at the roof of the mouth, melting with infinite slowness. The acrid sweetness teaches the tongue not to forget. Such is the taste of a kiss at the front door, when one foot must already seek the first step down, while the heart remains on a plate at the head of the table. Especially when it’s the first and last kiss, especially when it’s first love.

  Manolito the cook was sixteen when he was forced to say goodbye to her. He was a good cook, a very heartbroken good cook one summer night in Iraya when the master found out that the presumptuous son of a peasant had kissed Clarita, his beloved only daughter. Don Miguel Balaguer had witnessed the unforgivable insolence in his own house by the light of the candelabra at his own table. The crime took place after he had enjoyed a generous helping of the cook’s famous linupak special, right after he loosened his belt to let his stomach breathe. Clarita was at the head of the table, as she always was, and he had just gone to the balkon to light his final cigar of the day when that puñeta did it—I will not have a rapist for a cook. No, not even if he’s the best cook in the planet!

  One hand to his chest, as if missing his heart, and the other rubbing his lips over and over again, Manolito sat at the edge of his bamboo bed, hardly aware of his bruises. He had almost done it in that shadowed dining room, finally mustered enough courage to seek those lips behind the flickering candles, those always smiling lips of his Señorita. Lips which flaunted the crimson sheen of the tambis berry, which grew even more fiery by the light of eighteen tongues of flame. And always that slight lift at the corners of the mouth, there with a hint of a dimple, every time he served his meal offerings. And what about the dark brown eyes, ay, those tamarind-seed eyes, which perpetually glanced down to her left, and unobtrusively surveyed every wonder that he had seasoned with his own hands. Manolito made sure that her favourite dishes were always meticulously arranged to her left, so she could check that the cosido soup clouded over in a just-right way, that the green papayas in the chicken dish were still firm but tender to the bite and that the fern salad was not drowned by too much lemon, but still kept its vibrant green curlicues. Ay, doesn’t her hair curl that way at the ends!

  Manolito ran his hand over the bamboo bed that was now polished by his back, by all his nightly tossing and turning for the past six months, sometimes till the cock’s first crow. He should have known that he was doomed from that night he came to cook for the Villa Clarita, from the minute he stepped into the comidor, the only room that had no need of electric light. Instead, candles lit, as if for an eternal wake, at the head of the long, wooden table—ay, he should have been forewarned! But, no, bearing the steaming pork stew, his first accomplishment on the job, into the grand dining room, he was not at all deterred by the sight which met him. He charged headlong to his undoing.

  The walls were alive with shadows flung from the dining table which was a dark hardwood carved with cadena de amor around the edges. One shadow, bent by a hill-on-her-back, moved about armed with a fly swatter —Yaya Conching, housekeeper and nanny to the Señorita, as Manolito was to later understand. The corpulent Don Miguel, on the other hand, was fairly still except when he puffed his appetiser. His shadow evoked an immense capre, the cigar-smoking ghost which lived in old balete trees. But the new cook was hardly impressed. It was the third shadow, rigid and rectangular behind the head chair, that would eventually break his heart.

  “Hoy, quick, young man, or that stew will get cold,” Yaya Conching beckoned him. “Don Miguel, this is Manolito, our new cook.”

  The master ignored the earnest boy at his elbow though his once fine patrician nose, grown bulbous from too many years of wine and rich food, twitched slightly. The stew’s fragrant bay-leaf sauce never failed to achieve its desired effect.

  “No, no, not here. There, put that over there, close to our Clarita. Offer it to your Señorita first.” The old woman with the hill-on-her-back waved at him with the fly swatter. Manolito could only stand and gape.

  Yaya Conching directed him towards the head of the table where the candelabra were clustered, where one long, still shadow bloomed like a headstone, and where she sat with her eternal half-smile. Also framed in hardwood with the cadena de amor motif was a painting of the most beautiful girl in the world. It—she—was propped on the cabisera, the head-of-the-house dining chair, the most-important-person chair, the chair that would from then on haunt Manolito’s dreams. Clarita Balaguer at the head of the table.

  “Are you sure you got the right one for the
job, ha, Conching?”

  “Ay, of course, Señor, of course, he’s the son of our most reliable cook, the one who died last year, and her boy’s the best cook in Iraya now, so I hear—hoy, torpe, I said the stew goes beside Señorita Clarita—hoy!”

  I have almost repeated history, Manolito sighed into his hands that smelled of spices and despair. He gazed at the packed bag at his feet. Zipped up and ready to go, how lost it looks, as if aware that its owner was just a poor servant who had almost kissed the ghost of his dead mistress. Yes, a silly village boy who had pantomimed the past—a long time ago, an American Peace Corps volunteer had also stolen a kiss from Clarita’s mother. In that same comidor, the very much alive Señora Balaguer had tasted something sweeter than dessert, so she left her husband and baby for that white man, the slut! And the Don never recovered—never, never, the village drunk had hiccupped the tale into Manolito’s ears.

  Picking up his bag, Manolito vowed never to recover from the charms which seasoned his cooking with such fervour, allowing him to create the most flavoursome paella, the perfectly stuffed bangus, the tenderest pochero and his extraordinary boiled rice made fragrant by pandan leaves which he himself grew with nightly incantations of devotion. And, of course, his linupak special in its richest blend of sticky yams, young coconut meat, roasted peanuts, palm sugar, fresh carabao milk and the secret beating of his heart.

  “What are you muttering about, ha?” Yaya Conching wondered at Manolito’s odd style of preparing his linupak, the way he whispered to each ingredient before pounding it in the huge wooden mortar. “You crazy?”