Anne wrinkles her nose distastefully at the amount of sugar and dairy I mix into my coffee.
‘What do you want for lunch?’ I ask as I mix my champorado, cooling it as fast as I can so I can eat it right away.
She laughs. ‘How Pinoy of you to be talking about the next meal even before you’ve eaten this one.’
Times like this, she doesn’t seem sick. Times like this, when her eyes sparkle as she laughs from her belly, I tell myself that she isn’t really sick, that I am just visiting, that I will go home when she is better, back to Tim, back to work, back to my life far, far away from here.
But nowadays, one laugh is all it takes before she doubles up, coughing, hacking, trying to expel something, the demon that lives within, the one that courses through her veins and consumes her from the inside. I catch her as she bends over the table.
We eat in silence.
‘I don’t want to die.’
The words were uttered under her breath as we sat on the edge of the hut, watching the birds. There was almost a ridiculous amount of them in the yard now. It was almost funny.
I take her hand and squeeze it. She traces her other hand down my face.
‘They’re waiting, you know,’ she said. ‘For me.’
‘Don’t you think they’re overdoing it just a little?’
‘I know you’re here because you pity me.’
I take my hand away, hurt, angry. ‘You don’t get to talk to me like that,’ I say. ‘You don’t get to push me away.’ I get up and go inside.
There is always something to do at Anne’s. Picking herbs, drying herbs, preparing tinctures, preparing teas. Seeing to the vegetable garden, seeing to the chickens, gathering firewood and water, the general upkeep of a hut that’s slowly falling apart as if it was a reflection of its owner, who was slowly wasting away.
Out here, in the middle of nowhere, it is as easy to keep busy as it is to do nothing.
And there is always food. Anne and I, we’re eaters. We eat when we’re stressed, we eat when we’re bored. We eat when we want to avoid things. I distract myself by cooking, which I have to do anyway. I munch on some cashews as I make dinner. I’ve been eating a lot lately. I’m always hungry, always reaching for a meal, a snack. Anne, meanwhile, has lost some appetite, but not enough so that it’s alarming.
When we’re not keeping house or making sure herbs are stocked, we’re making food. She chops, I cook. It’s a rhythm we developed by accident, because neither of us can stand being still. It also helps fill the silences when we argue, an occurrence that has become alarming in its frequency.
We don’t talk until after dinner, when she takes my hand and says she is sorry. We hug. She gives me a peck on the lips; I let her. We lie beside each other, and I stroke her hair until she falls asleep. Then I go out to send Tim an SMS.
‘Tao po!’
The call comes at about five in the morning. Manong Albert, the baker.
Tao po. I’m a person. I’m not a beast or bird or monster. I am a person. I am a baker. Are you home? I need your help.
I check to see if the noise has woken Anne, but she is sleeping soundly. I put on a jacket and see to the visitor.
Five a.m. is still dark in these parts. The air is chilly and has yet to warm up. I find Manong at the entrance of the gate, battery operated lantern in hand, eyeing the yard full of birds warily. Most of the birds are asleep; you can hear them snoring very softly. The few that are awake are silent. They watch the intruder from their places on the ground, their perches on the trees.
Manong is visibly glad to see me. He calls out my name in relief. ‘Avery!’
‘Good morning, Manong.’ I walk towards the gate.
He looks worried. ‘I know Anne’s sick but – ’
‘I’m filling in for her for a while. What do you need?’
‘George, you remember my youngest boy? He has a toothache. It’s been bothering him all night.’
I give him a disapproving look. ‘We have a dentist in the barangay, you know.’
‘Ay, it’s not the same,’ he says good-naturedly. ‘You know that. Don’t let working in Manila make you think otherwise.’
I sigh. ‘Let me get something for him. Want to wait inside?’
He eyes the birds. ‘I’ll wait out here.’
It doesn’t take long to find what he needs. I wrap it up and hand it over. ‘Take Selo to the dentist as soon as you can, okay?’
Manong smiles. ‘Hay, ija. They don’t know what Anne does. What you do.’
‘I’m only here on vacation. I leave as soon as Anne’s better.’
‘I know, ija.’ He hands me two paper bags. One of them is comfortably warm. ‘For your breakfast,’ he says. ‘Thank you for your help.’
We have the pan de sal and Star margarine Manong Albert brought for breakfast. Anne was surprised.
‘I can’t believe I slept through that,’ she says miserably.
‘It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.’
‘I know. It’s just that I used to wake at the littlest sound. Now I sleep through everything.’
‘You need to rest to get better.’
‘I know,’ she sighs. ‘It’s just that I’m asleep longer and longer each day. I’m afraid that one day, I’ll just forget to wake up.’
The birds come when Anne’s asleep. They fly in softly and never leave. You’d think that this would result in a dirty, bloody mess, but the yard is clean. They eat and hunt and shit elsewhere. They pick the air clean of insects, and I swear – swear – that they keep the outside of the hut clean as well. They are usually silent. It is the newcomers who are noisy at first, but they calm down eventually. They learn to wait.
Dinner is steamed vegetables – okra, eggplant, string beans – with bagoong and steamed white rice. We have Coke because Anne is feeling celebratory at not having coughed all day, at not having buckled.
‘Do you love him?’
The question comes out of the blue, though I’ve been dreading it ever since I arrived. Anne had never brought up Tim until now.
‘What kind of question is that?’
She shrugs.
I don’t answer.
Anne and I, we have this thing. She likes to hold my hand and bury her face in my hair – things friends don’t normally do. Sometimes I let her, but sometimes, I pull my hand away, move my head, even though I want to keep them there, even though it is comfortable, even though it feels right. I like to think that we would have made a good pair, but I had things I wanted to do in life, and I knew that I would have to leave home to do them, something that Anne was never willing to do.
The barrio had always been good to me, but growing up, I felt that we had nothing to offer each other, that my calling lay elsewhere. I wasn’t built for a small town. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, only that whatever it was, it wouldn’t be here.
I look away, willing a change in subject. She is still staring at me when I look back.
‘What’s it to you?’ I ask, meeting her gaze.
‘Nothing,’ she mumbles. ‘Just making conversation.’
‘Dr. Vera is coming by tomorrow,’ I say. ‘He says he may know what’s making you sick.’
Anne smirks. ‘We all know what’s making me sick.’
‘No, we don’t.’
‘Yes, we do. Everyone does, even though they won’t say it.’
‘This isn’t some ancient family curse, Anne.’
She looks hurt. ‘It isn’t a curse.’
‘I’m sorry.’
We don’t talk the whole night after.
I really like Dr. Vera. He’s smart and funny and really enjoys his work, even if it sometimes means trekking through the forest to see out-of-the-way patients like Anne. He grew up in the barrio. He’s older, old enough that by the time we were kids he had gone off to
med school, so we weren’t familiar enough to call him by his first name when he returned.
He’d been here a couple of times before I arrived, administering tests, trying to get Anne to take medicine, trying to tell her that there shouldn’t be anything wrong with her, that it’s all in her head. He doesn’t understand it, how she can be ill. All her vital signs are normal; there is nothing wrong with her. He does not understand how a perfectly healthy person can be wasting away in front of him, coughing hard, throwing up black bile. He wants to study her, publish her case in a journal. He knows none of us will let him.
He speaks to me outside the hut. The birds watch us, watch him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He is confused. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do. If only she’d let herself be checked into a – ’
‘We both know they won’t be able to find anything, either,’ I say.
He nods, numb. I wonder what kind of a doctor he is, unable to grasp the idea that someone is going to die from something no one understands. He struggles to say something. I wait until he finally finds the words.
‘It’s true what they say about her family,’ he says. ‘Only back then, it was her aunt. I was about seven when I caught a fever. My parents brought me here – to her. I don’t remember what she did. I should be dead. That’s why I became a doctor. I want to do what she did. I want to thank her by saving lives.’ He looks at me. ‘And now Anne is sick, and I can’t save her.’
It is easy to make someone’s pain about yourself. You feel helpless, you internalize their discomfort, make it your drama. You are stealing their thunder; suddenly, you have a venue to attract the attention you did not know you were seeking. I understand Dr. Vera’s frustration, but I also think that he should have known better.
I am very careful not to make Anne’s pain mine. I am very particular about making sure that my pain is my own, and I have to remind myself that whatever frustration I feel is nothing compared to Anne’s. I have to remind myself that I am not the one who is dying. I have to remind myself that this is not my story. But sometimes, in the middle of the night, when I wake suddenly, either from a dream or the sound of an errant bird or from a flash of blind fear, I wonder if really, this is a story about me, too.
It is not hard to care for Anne when she’s in a good mood. And I know she tries to be, for the most part, for my sake. But sometimes, she can be difficult. Sometimes, most of the time, she wants me to leave.
‘Bitch,’ she says one day, throwing her plate across the room, fish and rice flying.
‘Stop it,’ I say. We are not fighting. We are not fighting.
‘You left when I told you not to. Why are you here now? Because you feel guilty? I don’t need your charity.’
I clean up her mess. I do not say anything.
‘Why are you here?’ she asks.
I do not answer, not because I don’t want to engage her, but because I don’t know the answer to that myself.
The birds are particularly noisy the morning I call Tim. Even he can hear them on the other end of the line, a cacophony of shrills and shrieks, of caws and calls.
‘What the hell is going on there?’ he asks through a choppy signal.
‘It’s the birds,’ I say. Tim knows all about the birds. ‘They’re crazy today. I don’t know why.’
‘When are you coming home?’
The question makes me feel guilty. There I was, in the middle of a life I had left behind a long time ago, while the life I had wanted, the life I had made for myself, was put on hold. A crow dive-bombs me before I can answer. I duck instinctively, almost dropping my phone. The bird calls become louder, more agitated, until it feels like they encompass the whole forest.
‘I’ll call you as soon as I can,’ I scream into the phone. ‘I love you.’
I barely finish the sentence when another bird comes for me, and I have to run into the safety of the hut.
I close the door, waking Anne with my short, loud gasps. She looks more pained than usual. Her skin has taken on a pallor just this side of gray. Her eyes have lost their sheen. She looks weak, spent. Outside, the birds continue their assault, calling at each other, attacking the hut, engaging in aerial warfare.
She looks at me. I take her in my arms. We hold on tightly to each other until the clamor dies down.
We don’t fall asleep, even after the birds calm down. It is comfortable, holding Anne and being held by her. It had taken us a while to get back to this level of familiarity, the week I had been here starting out with our just staring at each other; then a hand carelessly alighting on an arm, to be pulled away self-consciously at first, but to stay on with a soft squeeze later. And then we were holding hands again, running fingers through each other’s hair, holding each other through the night. This time, when she puts her head on my shoulder, I let her. When she presses her lips to my cheek, I do not pull away. Sometimes, I kiss her back. While it is true that the dying get away with many things, I believe that the ones who know they will be left behind take many liberties as well.
I don’t know how long it has been since the birds stopped, how long it has been since the only thing we can hear is the sound of our breath, and underneath, the thud of our heartbeats. Anne is warm against me. She hugs me, pulling me in tight before letting her arms go slightly limp, her hands slowly, deliberately, sliding up and down my back. I rest my head on her clavicle, snuggling close. There’s a small rumble in my belly. Idly, I think that I would like a snack. But this, I like this more. I tilt my head up. Our eyes meet, and then our lips, and it is the most delicious thing in the world. We move slowly, but with a feverishness running underneath, the years of holding back behind us, unbelieving, wanting things to move faster, wanting this first moment to last forever. I take her nightshirt off and kiss her breasts. She does the same to me. We fuck, both of us afraid to say anything, both of us worried that this might not be real. When morning wakes us, we are wrapped around each other, naked, and happy.
Things seem easier after that. We stop arguing, almost. We laugh more. Anne regains some color, though the cough is still there, and she still throws up sometimes. But now I can hold her hand and squeeze it and kiss her, and she can kiss me back and play with my hair and snake her hand up my shirt to touch my breasts and I can, in turn, dip my hand inside her underwear and then we are fucking again, sometimes loudly, sometimes in silence, sometimes schoolgirl giggly. We baptize her hut with our juices, our laughter, our love. Times like this, Anne does not seem sick at all. Times like this, when she is whispering my name, asking me to go faster, slower, deeper, I wonder what it would have been like if I hadn’t left the barrio, what our life would have been like together. But, in the wee hours of the morning, when I am awake and Anne is sleeping, I tell myself I know the answer to that question: no matter what I would have chosen in the past, it would always end like this, here in this hut, with Anne dying.
The days seem shorter now. We spend them picking and drying herbs, preparing tinctures and poultices, seeing to the people who occasionally drop by. Most of the time, they bring things to barter for our services: rice, fish, chicken, snacks. Sometimes, they visit just because. Anne would meet them when she felt that she was strong enough, but lately, it seems to be more and more just me.
‘You have a knack for this,’ Aling Bebang, the grocer, said once.
‘I’m only here until Anne gets better,’ I reply.
I had been there a month by then.
‘When are you coming home?’ Tim asks, the question more and more frequent now.
‘Soon,’ I say. ‘Soon.’
The birds go crazy only one other time, and that is the night Anne died.
It was just before dinner. We were lying in bed, talking, when Anne seized into the fetal position, clutching her abdomen. She was trying to cough and breathe at the same time, her breaths coming out in short wheezes punct
uated by the shaking of her small, frail body. I tried to pull away so I could reach for medicine, but she held me close, with a surprising strength I didn’t know she had.
‘I can’t do this anymore,’ she said.
Outside, the birds began to stir, then began to call, soft chirping giving way to screeches and caws, the shapes of flying raptors turning the night darker, more sinister. Anne began to dry heave, each spasm a wave of pain, each gasp a choke that ended with air and a little saliva, black around the edges.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Help me.’
I have thought long and hard about this moment. I had been thinking about it even before I left the barrio, even before I let Anne disappear from my life, before I got her letter, before I returned. I was unsure and resentful when I first arrived, but the last month has helped me make peace with what must be done. People say that everybody has a choice, and this is true. But sometimes, the choices are moot, skewed, unfair, irrelevant. I knew that I had a choice not to open that letter. I knew that I had a choice not to return. I knew that I had a choice to leave.
I also knew that, deep in my heart of hearts, I didn’t.
Tim knows this. I made sure to tell him everything, to have his consent before I left. He is a good man, and I am lucky to have him.
I gently lifted Anne so that we were both sitting. She held my face, tracing my jawline with her thumbs, our eyes never leaving each other. She brought her lips to mine. Anne’s kisses are usually sweet, her tongue electric. This time, it felt as if she was devouring me, and I felt a hunger I had never sensed before. Her grip on my face became stronger, but still gentle. She started hacking, dry heaving, but would not let go, her mouth still on mine. I panicked, trying to push myself away, but Anne held on tight. We heard it before we felt it, a soft pop. Something had come up Anne’s throat and was pushed into my mouth. It felt small and slick and wrong. I jerked back on impulse, spit it out. It fell to the floor, making tiny sounds of distress.
Outside, the cacophony continued to rise, more and more birds joining in, the sound confusing and deafening. We heard something thud against the hut, and then another, and another. The birds were dive-bombing the hut again, the normally docile birds attacking us, trying to get inside.
The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Page 38