White Turtle

by Merlinda Bobis

  As I am supposed to be deaf, I light my fire instead. Any moment now, the rice would boil. I had even set aside some dried fish to fry and a few wild tomatoes. A stray dog whines, scratching its behind against my stairs. It knows this is the only hut preparing supper. It shares my belief—the chickens have roosted, so we must get on with the end of the day. But no one notices our conspiracy. Everyone is anxious to beat the rising of the moon. Before the moon rises, the soldiers bark. The dog whines again. I throw it a dried fish. Perhaps, between the two us, the moon will not rise tonight.

  A baby’s cry is smothered on its mother’s breast. A few men whisper angrily among themselves. An old woman is weeping softly into her skirt. Because it is hushed, this leave-taking is too loud for me. No one knows this though. In this new hut of kogon grass and bamboo, I am apart from all their restrained frenzy, because everyone has forgotten me.

  When I first arrived, the villagers had regarded me with much apprehension. I must have struck them as a strange vision. A very old woman, shrivelled and dark as a coconut husk, trailing long white hair to her ankles as she carried trunks of bamboo from the forest. How can she be so strong? The mothers and fathers were convinced I was evil, so they asked their children to keep away from “that stranger”. Thus, from a distance, they watched me build this hut. At first, they suspiciously eyed my sharp tabak clearing the kogon grass; after some time, they grew braver. They began to mimic my posture.

  She is so bent, she’s almost kissing the ground. She wants to kiss carabao dung! She wants to kiss carabao dung! They followed me around for two weeks, but got tired, because I was so quiet. They told their parents I was harmless and probably deaf, because I did not mind their taunting. Buktot na, bungog pa—not only bent, but deaf as well.

  This dog’s masticating is a sad sound. It does not stop even after the dried fish is gone. I have forgotten how many times I’ve heard this sound before. Hunger is undeniably animal and it does not shut up. Ay, the sound of mastication will soon rise with the moon, with many moons, into a crescendo of a hungry village choir in the forest. Before the moon rises—bah! These soldiers will return to their camps and meat and rice and beer! The village? Probably in the forest, probably surviving. Just another evacuated village after all. Can’t help it. The rebels must be hunted. Cut all avenues of aid or escape.

  “Bantay! There’s Bantay, Mamay!”

  A young girl is running towards my hut followed by a woman dragging a heavy bag. As if they were coming home so soon. The dog wags its tail.

  “She took my dog.” She points a grubby finger at me and sucks it, in between bouts of accusation.

  “Nene, we have no time for dogs.” The mother’s voice is tight. She does not look at me.

  “Bungog is not leaving like us? Hey, listen everyone, ‘the deaf one’ is not leaving like us!” The girl shrieks at a few villagers who have followed her to my hut. Her eyes are bulging.

  “I say, the deaf one does not want to leave with us!”

  The mother yanks the girl from my stairs and hits her loudly on the bottom. She howls. The mother drops the bag and kneels weeping before the dog. It licks her hand.

  “Really? How could she stay?”

  “Doesn’t she know?”

  “She’s deaf, can’t you see?”

  A group of meddlers begin to gather before my hut. I should not want to invite them to rice and dried fish and tomatoes before the moon rises.

  “Do the soldiers know?”

  “Aren’t you going, too?”

  A hysterical giggle. “Don’t ask. Can’t you see she’s as deaf as a bat?”

  “What’s all this racket?”

  A soldier has arrived. He parts the crowd with his gun. The youngest of them, I suppose, only a boy really. He steps back when he sees me. He stares at my long white hair which the dog is trying to catch with its paw. The crowd fall silent. The boy hesitates for a while then barks at me to get going, a rather feeble bark. He clutches the heavy gun too tightly, as if it would run away. The crowd titters.

  “She’s deaf, stone-deaf. You have to explain with your face, with actions.”

  Power positions shift. The boy looks at me then at the slightly jeering crowd.

  “Go on, go on. Tell the deaf one to leave her house, too. See if you can make her.”

  The boy hesitates, then begins to wave his gun towards me and the forest. His green body hops about. I think of a praying mantis giving directions. He is making me sadder every minute.

  “The rice is boiling. I have to attend to it, or else it will burn.” I leave the confused boy and the laughing crowd.

  “Putang ina mo—your mother’s a whore!” He swears after me. I hear his steps on my bamboo stairs.

  “Ay, your mother should burn your tongue, talking to your elder like that,” someone from the crowd tut-tuts.

  The steps halt.

  “Yes, burn your tongue with chilli, I say.”

  “Go back to your mother, boy, and make her teach you some manners!”

  “Not only the hottest chilli, but the stick, that’s what you need.”

  “Putang ina, n’yo—all your mothers are whores!”

  “Hala, your tongue might break out in rashes if you—”

  A shot rings just as I lift the lid off the pot. I rush back to my doorstep. All the soldiers are rushing to my doorstep. The whole village seems to be rushing to my doorstep. All before the moon rises.

  “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t mean to.” The boy is shaking before the young girl who is bleeding profusely.

  “Bungog is a jinx!”

  “The deaf one is bad luck!”

  “She’s evil! Didn’t I tell you? Maybe, she’s really a witch!”

  “She must not come with us!”

  “Look out. She wants to touch her. Don’t let her. No, don’t—”

  The girl is alive, but with a severe thigh wound. I examine it gingerly. The crowd takes in a breath in unison, as if I had betrayed each of their wounds. They do not stop me. They are afraid. I rip the hem of my skirt and proceed to make a tourniquet.

  “You have blood under your eye, boy,” I turn to the shaking lad kneeling before his victim. He begins to weep as if his heart would break.

  The soldiers, who were momentarily stunned by our little drama, are jolted by the boy’s hysteria. The tallest of them, obviously the leader, slaps “the sissy” then barks at the crowd to get going. Everyone begins to bark all at once. No time for this, no time. The boy is crying uncontrollably now. He seems to be more grief-stricken than the girl’s mother. “Take her into my hut,” I tell him.

  “We have no time for this, old woman,” the leader says.

  “We will make time.”

  “And who are you to—?”

  “I am Selma of the North and South, and, I say, we will make time.”

  The village is hushed. Not because of my temerity, but because this is the first time they hear my name.

  “Insolent hag!” The soldier points his gun at me. I hear the tightening of everyone’s gut in the crowd. I start binding the girl’s thigh. He kneels, aiming the gun at my temple. I watch his trigger finger whiten, whiter than his eyeballs. The sobbing boy screams. I pluck a strand of my hair and tie it around the prodding muzzle, push it aside, then begin to chant.

  “Hare baya, Nonoy,”

  sabi kang bulan.

  “Hare baya, Nonoy,

  pagkawati ang saldang.”

  The soldier fidgets. He stares at the muzzle and then at my white hair trailing before his feet. His eyes glaze over. He drops his gun. The breathing of the village ebbs and flows like the tide.

  “Don’t, my Son,”

  the moon said.

  “Don’t, my Son,

  play with the sun.”

  He drops to his knees, pawing my hair like a dog. I rub the young girl’s blood on the back of his hand. He whines and offers his palm to be rubbed as well. Some of the villagers search the sky for the moon.

  “Hare bay
a, Nonoy,”

  sabi kang bulan.

  “Hare baya, Nonoy,

  paghaluna ang saldang.”

  He lifts the young girl. I follow them to my hut.

  “Don’t my Son,”

  said the moon.

  “Don’t, my Son,

  swallow the sun.”

  The whole village follows them to my hut—ay, I have done it again. Selma, the storyteller of the North and South, has done it again. Didn’t I promise myself that, on my hundredth year, I would wait for my last days peacefully in a hut apart from people and their stories? I promised not to care any more. I had seen and heard too many stories by now and had told them many times over. But the young girl had to come looking for her dog. She had to set me to my old task again.

  Now I have the village in my hut. Another people must be told stories, so they can hear the forgotten tale in each drop of blood that they spill. Every tale which dries up and dies when it leaves the body. What nuisance! On my hundredth year, I will be asked to sing their blood again, so they can understand and change their history. So they can keep the moon from rising.

  “Nanay Selma, tell us a story.” Mother Selma? The tallest green man had curled at my feet beside the dog. Neither barks.

  “Tell us a story about wounds.” The young girl’s mother, now quite calm, stems the flow of blood, while I probe for the bullet.

  “A story about tears.” The weeping boy has cupped his tears and drunk them. He must be very thirsty after a long day of barking.

  “About going away.”

  “About the forest.”

  “About the moon before it rises.”

  The whole village make demands while exploring my hut. With each step they take, the hut expands, as if trying to accommodate all. This ridiculous generosity is slipping from my fingers, pushing the kogon walls to expand. My hut has become the village. Look, they have overtaken me again, fingering my beads of the rainbow on the wall, hovering over some bones near the fire.

  “Pearl grey,” a voice behind me intones.

  “Are they human ones?”

  “Don’t touch them.”

  “Your fingers might rot. You never know…”

  The hushed voices are drowned by several babies bawling in synchronised hunger. The mothers bare their breasts. A young man farts too loudly. The children giggle and tease. Some of the soldiers suggest that the grief-stricken boy lie down to keep his tears from spilling. A grandfather says it’s a good idea. Everyone talks all at once, trying to give advice. The hut trembles with all their home-noises holding back the rising of the moon.

  “Ay, lintian—may the lightning strike you!” The young girl curses me in her pain. Her mother shushes her. The whole village and the soldiers echo the chiding sound while embarrassedly searching my face.

  The bullet is a little devil on my palm. I return it to the weeping boy and begin to chew some herbs for the wound. It occurs to me that I had burnt the rice and that there is not enough dried fish and tomatoes for everyone.

  Frock

  Silvery fish on each breast. A trail of green turtles around the waist. He blinks and looks again as Aunt Emilia turns towards the door. A fin quivers.

  “Hello…” she says with a mournful lilt in the “o”.

  A cold draught tails the big man. She shivers. A fish grows fat with a nipple.

  “Emmy, Emmy…” he kind of croons in a big man’s way.

  She hesitates at first before shutting the door behind him. A flipper makes a tiny backstroke, just above her tummy. Secretly, of course.

  From under the table, Bobby stares at these goings-on. He’s nearly nine and extremely curious.

  An arm circles her waist. The turtles are hidden and the fishes press close to his chest. Watch it, mister, oh, you’ll hurt them, you’ll squeeze them dead!

  Bobby can hardly breathe, imagining the damage to the little swimmers on her dress, her sea-dress, he calls it. An iridescent blue, green, and even pink sometimes? Bobby thinks it’s trying to confuse him, playing tricks under the sun or lamp, and even the glare from TV just now. But while he can’t decide on the exact hue, he’s quite certain that the little prints come to life occasionally and glow. Two fishes and eight turtles. He counted the latter several times, right after she arrived, just to make sure.

  “Come home…” The big man’s arm makes it ripple.

  Bobby fidgets. He’s trying to get a better look at how the arm does it, make the cloth move like that.

  His favourite frock, but Aunt Emilia doesn’t know this, of course. He hasn’t told her, well, can’t really, because his most beautiful Aunt always locks herself up in her room or in the bath—she takes very long baths. For the fishes and turtles, of course, Bobby reckons. He imagines she steps into the bath fully clothed, so the creatures can have a dip with her in water that always smells of lavender.

  “No, Rodney, please…”

  Bobby likes to eavesdrop on this event. He hears a wee splash every now and then. A fish diving from her breast, no, a turtle taking off from her waist, surely. Leaning against the bathroom door, he memorises the sound-shifts of her body, a leg curling up to give the turtles more room, perhaps, an arm stretched like driftwood for a fish to blow bubbles to.

  “It will be okay now, after…”

  Then he bathes after her, so he can check that no fish or turtle has gone down the drain. She tries not to look at him when she comes out, all moist and sniffly, always sniffly and red in the eyes as though she were catching a cold. He wants to ask about the creatures, but his mother warns him not to bother poor Auntie, because she isn’t well so we have to be very nice to her for the few days when she’s here and so on and so on. His mother always has a string of worries.

  “I didn’t go.”

  “You didn’t…?”

  “No.” Her voice is low and flat.

  He holds her too tightly. “But Emmy…”

  “YOU MUSN’T CRUSH THEM, MISTER—!”

  She jumps out of the embrace—“Bobby again, Bobby everywhere.”

  The boy crawls out of his secret den.

  “Eavesdropping will burn your ears, if you don’t take care.” She walks towards the culprit.

  Her skirt is so close, blue this time, underwater blue. The hem nearly brushes his face as he stands. He is a tiny boy with a perpetually quizzical expression.

  “Hello, Bobby,” the man says.

  He ignores the proffered big hand. “They’ll die if you don’t take care, with him.”

  Silence. She stares at the boy, looking perplexed for a moment, then forgets him. “Die, die…,” she mumbles to the wall. “Whatever can die, Rodney?”

  “Emmy…”

  “Your two fishes and eight turtles, of course.” Bobby is in earnest.

  She can’t stop giggling, the fishes and turtles are shaking, they all think he’s being funny, except the man. The frock moves away, it’s blue but turning green as you stare at it longer, like now, with flashes of pink if you close then suddenly open your eyes. On her hips, sometimes on her back, or on her tummy. It never stays in one place, no, never, this pink.

  “You said you’d do it…” Suddenly, the man looks very unhappy.

  Aunt Emilia keeps studying the wall, hugging her arms around the two fishes, as if they were cold.

  The turtles are hidden by the table. Bobby is almost tempted to peek under it to see what they’re up to this time. He fiddles with the lace tablecloth, raring to lift it and then go under. He is oblivious to their conversation; it’s a little slow and strained. His mother is working hard to make it gallop along, but with little success.

  “Emilia should stay with us for a while, until you two can sort it out before—before the wedding? Have you chosen a church? I suggest you—”

  “Sister, oh dear sister Edna, we can’t sort it out, because I didn’t go, did I?” Aunt Emilia’s giggles are multiplying with each glass of wine. “Did I, Rodney?” Her black curls look strange, like a dark halo gone wild.


  “Go?” Edna turns to Rodney who turns away. He doesn’t know where to put his big arms.

  The fishes echo her giggles. Was that a flick of the fin or the tail? And where they swim, the water is incandescent, blue-green-pink with candlelight flickers. Bobby is hopelessly enamoured. The creatures have never looked so alive.

  She catches him staring. “My strange nephew likes my fish.” She passes a thumb over her breast, making a little circle around a blue tail.

  Bobby feels warm all over, he doesn’t know why.

  “You’re drunk, Emilia,” his mother sighs, checking her nape for hair which might have strayed from a perfect chignon. She always does this when she’s worried.

  “But Rodney likes my fish even better, don’t you, Rodney—but only the fish.”

  “I don’t know what’s your problem, Emmy, you never tell me anything, really, you arrived here in a huff, on another rare, emotional visit, and I took you in and didn’t ask questions, but you wouldn’t…you said you got engaged…” She sounds impatient, she can’t find any stray hair.

  “My fishes got very much engaged.” She cups her breasts. The fins sway slightly and the water ripples. “You love them so much, don’t you, Rodney?” She winks at Bobby.

  “Hush, Emilia!” His mother taps her chignon, as though censuring it.

  “Fishes, yes, but other little creatures, no. Not when they get in the way to happiness—well, here’s to happiness then.” She drains her glass. Her neck is so white against the blue.

  “Sorry, Edna, she shouldn’t have bothered you…”

  “My sister hasn’t changed at all, Rodney.”

  “Not a bit. I love an audience, don’t I?”

  “Let’s just go home, Emmy. We’ll drive back tonight.”