“Money?” Tala asked more gently. “You came here for money?” Money she could live without. A soul she could not. Money could take the place of a soul.
“Just what you owe, Sis,” he said, addressing Tala and leaning even farther back on two of the chair’s four legs. He’d barely flinched at Manolo’s outburst. “We had a business deal, or have you forgotten? It was already signed, by you and me both. I accepted the foreigner’s offer. He arranged for your visa, he sent your plane ticket. Imagine my embarrassment when you fled.”
“What is this nonsense?” Manolo stood up in his chair. “Who are you to come here like this? What thick skin you have!”
“How much money do I owe?” she asked.
She looked at Manolo apologetically as she said the words, and his eyes returned a question, one of the many he had asked since the word Charo entered his vocabulary. Instead of springing on Charo liked he’d looked ready to do, he sank back into his chair like a tired leaf.
Charo asked for enough money to cover what he’d lost from the deal (because of her)—plus more cash to cover three more like it. Then he changed his mind, showing what he called his “charitable side,” because Tala was, after all, his sister. He would only need the money he’d lost repaying the foreigner, whose pride kept him from accepting any of the other girls and their glossy pictures that couldn’t seem to compete with Tala’s. He asked for the money in installments, whatever Tala or the fancy doctor could spare. He had faith, he said, in their ability to commit, and he’d be sure his crew checked up on them all the time, now that he knew where the happy family lived.
“But finding you, Sis, is the biggest reward. After all, we’re family. I’ll deal with the others differently. That reminds me, there’s another reason why I’m here, why I found you now after all these years. Ma is dead. Yes, dead, she finally called it quits. But don’t worry too much, Sis. She was never really alive to begin with, was she?”
17. Wakefulness
They fought without politeness behind the privacy of their bedroom door. At the height of his anger, Manolo wished he was the type of man who could strike a woman across the face. But he was not, and she knew this. She aggravated him all the more with the look in her eyes—a wild, flashing dare that hoped for the chance to be struck and strike back. It made him feel colder inside.
“Is he even your brother, or is he just your pimp?”
He watched the expression on her face change and knew she had found something in him to hate, that at that moment her hatred for him was complete, tapping into something begun long ago, before their time, tracing back to them full circle. If she had the resolve to sustain it, she could wrap that length of hatred around her heart until it engulfed their whole world—slowly, like a painful emptying, until there was nothing left. How many times and to how many couples had this already happened, and all because of that moment when everything changed? When one became capable of despising the other.
In spite of her unhappiness, evident in the jutting of her lips, stooped posture, and inflamed nostrils, Tala was more controlled, almost too much so.
“Why are you acting like this is all new to you?” she asked him with too much stillness. “You told them so yourself.”
“Told who, Tala? Told what? I obviously know nothing. What are you going to tell me next? That your name isn’t Tala? That everything has been pretend to you, from the very beginning?”
As she built her momentum it was clear she was fighting to keep from losing it. That the words she’d been holding back threatened to come out all at once, and then nothing would be clear. He listened to her say that he’d spoken the truth many times before—to their neighbors, family, and friends. And where did he think such words could come from? Those words that labeled her a runaway, escaping an arranged overseas marriage with no return policy—and with that simple trick they closed their mouths just like that, ashamed to dig for more unless he volunteered the information. Afraid to think of the daughters whom they, too, had forsaken to Tagarro Bay, sold to families as maids and babysitters, torn from primary school to become shop girls earning the family’s rice or the male sibling’s education? Wasn’t that just as bad? Wasn’t that what he had wanted them to feel?
No.
But the words had come from somewhere—the truth, the reality of her, a runaway, a poor nobody whose own blood would offer her as trade. He had known it all along, and why, she asked, did he pretend to forget, putting the burden of truth on her shoulders alone? When did she stop being her, enough for him to stop believing her story, her truth? She was no longer apologetic—sorry became bitter, angry at her truth, at her shame, at his denial.
No, Tala, no!
She had told him herself on the night they met at the river, when she’d been soiled from head to toe after spending five nights running, hiding on the back of moving farm wagons, filled with shit, cutting her skin (that he later disinfected) on barbed wire to sleep in chicken pens, tearing her feet (that he later wrapped in a warm washcloth) on hard ground until she’d found solace in the river, hidden from the rest of the world. Her story, her sad awful story, not of the brother but the doomed bride, the marriage that had never taken place, and what about the marriage that did, wasn’t she his now? Wasn’t it all too easy to sweep the uncomfortable away and hide it out of sight? Wasn’t that the reason they had both settled with silence, the never knowing or asking, and why she’d never gotten into the details about the contract or the brother who forced her to sign it? Didn’t he forget what he’d heard, was he going to keep forgetting all the hearing and the knowing, running away from what she’d been running away from? Was he going to keep hiding it away in some shameful hole and pretend? That she was some angel? Some innocent?
He shook his head no all the while, no, no, no, holding his face in his hands.
She stood, pacing, sometimes halting in her steps to face him where he sat at the edge of the bed. Her tone was at its lowest, the edges of her voice sharp. He was forgetting, she accused, he was hiding.
It was after one a.m. Outside, nocturnal hunters screeched in the night, claiming their fill. When he knew that she had had her say, he got up and walked out without a word, closing the bedroom door behind him almost soundlessly.
He would sleep on the sofa that night. Rather, he would lie awake through most of the night until fatigue made wakefulness unbearable, even for his restless mind.
This was the first time they’d slept apart since marrying. He did not bother to grab a blanket or a pillow. The darkness that engulfed him would have to suffice. The sofa was lumpy and too soft. He tossed from side to side, agitated. He thought of her lying awake just steps away, pained and possibly crying. Or, perhaps, she had already fallen asleep, fatigued from their walk from the river, the impromptu dinner with Charo, and then, this. He remembered that she was six months pregnant and felt a tinge of guilt. He remembered one other period of time when he’d slept on the couch, imagining how Tala might be faring steps away behind his bedroom door. It had been a torturous span of nights—torturous and ecstatic. It had been just before their marriage.
Their courtship had lasted a mere two weeks. Even more scandalous was their living together, from the time of that first impossible walk, away from river and field to the sharp lines of windows, lampposts, and fences, when step by merciful step she did not disappear. And every night from the living room sofa he’d marveled at the thought of her sleeping beneath the same roof, across the hall on his bed, her body pressed against the spaces where his had been. He’d waken hourly from fitful sleeps, checking the clock, imagining the heat of her just seventeen steps away, counting minutes until morning when he’d see her face again. At breakfast, she lit up the kitchen with fresh energy, her gentle, lovely voice and manner permeating through them all like warm cocoa, and he learned what it felt like to be full, really full, from his belly to his heart. His parents chatted with their young guest, politely at first, then more and more cheerfully as they let down their guard. It del
ighted him to see how comfortable she felt in their company, how easily she invited them to relax in hers.
With people there were always layers, and it could take years or hours to peel them away, to get to the real person underneath. It happened with his patients all the time—the reticence when they sat on his examination table, baring their skin and the aches that throbbed beneath it. With their nakedness exposed on that stiff bed, they rarely spoke frankly, at first. He helped them along with disarming touches—approving nods as he checked the ears and the eyes and the mouth, harmless presses on the stomach, encouraging pats of a stethoscope upon their backs, all while they rambled about bygone days (I was fit as a fieldhand in my youth, all muscle on these arms and no fat) or favorite recipes (leche flan did me in, Doctor, a dozen egg yolks per pie, and I can’t stay away!) or quirky pets (GiGi can sense it when my heart rate goes up, she sings in her cage to keep me calm). Then just before he asked them to retie their shoes and button up their blouses, they clung to the edge of the examination table and remembered their pain with sudden urgency, describing its every prick, entreating him with their eyes for a sign that their maladies could be cured, that they could return to their recipes and pets and memories without the sticky film of worry nagging beneath the skin. Tala, he learned, was always the person underneath, speaking her mind so bluntly it was funny. He discovered a woman so free of pretense that the love inside him grew beyond what he’d imagined it could. Between messy bites of her omelet, she teased about whose shoes left the worst stench in the hallway, and Manolo met his father’s eyes across the table, the same hope buzzing between them—that she would not be a temporary visitor.
During the day, he’d taken time off work to walk with her, pointing out the homes from which chickens strutted off on their happy meanderings, greeting the children who waved or stared, avoiding eye contact with the neighborhood gossips who peered at them from their windows with their dishrags in hand like weapons against the world’s dust and grime and scandal. She did not pass the children by with a smile and wave, but chased them with growls and raised claws. He laughed as they fled from her with glee, returning with all the more enthusiasm as they followed her hopefully for half a mile down the road. He showed her the bus route and the stops where it dropped off mail. He brought her to the plaza lined with vendors, introducing her to his favorite fishmonger, butcher, and baker. Nanang Aglibut sent them away with three pounds of fresh tilapia, on the house, Yan-Yan gave them a markdown price on the day’s oxtail, and Rommel said hello with a crooked smile, then returned to his flour. They fed pigeons by the fountain and stopped at panciterias to lunch on nest egg soup. As they ate, they talked about his school days, when his father worked for the railroad company and his mother made and sold palm wine to the entire province. Tala avoided the subject of her family, not by looking away or drifting into nostalgic silence, but by staring at him blankly and telling him simply that she wasn’t ready to talk. Instead, they had an entire conversation about all the injuries she’d suffered—a sprained ankle, strep throat, purple hands from cold water, and he told her how he would have treated each case—with ice and elevation, antibiotics, warmth and circulation. They didn’t discuss the future, how long she would stay at Manolo’s or where she would go if she decided to leave. A week passed. Another came.
One evening, she locked herself in his mother’s room, and for hours, the two women’s shrieks and laughter erupted from behind the closed door. He didn’t see her again until dinner, when she came to the table wearing a new yellow dress, embroidered along the edges, with matching gold jewelry upon her wrists, earlobes, and neck, and her hair in a single braid. Their eyes met often during that meal when he hardly swallowed a bite, unspoken word after unspoken word dancing between them. That night, he tossed and twisted on the sofa cushions, straining for any sound of her in the bedroom, dangling upon the faintest wisps of sleep, and when he woke for what seemed like the fiftieth time, hours before sunrise, it was not the clock he saw but the outline of her face in the dark as she knelt beside him. Like the first step into a dream, he drifted into the maddening touch of her lips on his, gentle at first, then freer, and he stopped the fire quickly, begging her to wait. She rubbed a fingertip across his lips. They married the next day.
The priest wouldn’t hear of such a union taking place in his church—between an untested couple living in sin. Where was their foundation, without years of friendship and earnest courting to build upon? Without her family’s approval? With no history of attendance in his church by either party? By then Manolo’s story had spread like soft butter across a loaf of bread and the neighbors ate up every crumb, gathering in living rooms, storefronts, and porches to gossip about the reclusive doctor, who had found himself a penniless and beautiful runaway. Could she be trusted? Could he? Could a marriage based on lust and convenience?
The babaylan had asked no questions. Candle upon candle lit every surface in her hut, sealed from the eyes of the sun, and the flickering light changed constantly, at times radiant, like joy itself, at times a wavy blur that suspended the room in keeping with the flames’ strange dance. They stood in a circle on the wedding day, a gathering of souls submerged in the fire glow, all of them accommodated by that one endless room, the shadows they made trailing across one another’s faces—Tala, Manolo, Iolana, Andres, Luchie; Little Roland, his wife, and their three children’s families; Camcam, Lourdes, and their families.
The babaylan stood in the center, all bones and hair, in an ordinary housewife’s dress patterned with purple and white flowers. Her bloodline was said to reach as far back as the first tribe to have peopled the islands. They watched her for any signs of movement—a blink or a twitch or a sigh—as she stood like an ancient tree, knotted eyes closed and wearied arms outstretched. Her fingertips woke to life first, stroking the air’s vibrations. Then her voice filled the room, a low murmur that grew to a loud murmur and then to a chant—words they did not understand but felt, its rising and falling matching the rhythm of the candles, and her words and their melody reached into and through them, knowing their worst pain and deepest hopes, weaving a thread between them, through time and bone and everything that was. She chanted, and at once they knew it was a song of the mountains, belonging to the land, it was a sound like wind, whipping through skin, becoming hurricane then blessed relief then hurricane again. She was the song and she belonged to the land, as did they, as did all who came before them, as did Datu’s hand wrapped tightly around his grandmother’s, as did Iolana’s dreams of winged men, as did Luchie’s unremembered childhood, as did the palm trees’ music outside the one window, brushing up against the glass as the wind and the voice reached new heights. She followed her fingertips’ vibrations, turning within their circle like the center of a compass, listening to the wind between their heartbeats, stumbling toward the east, toward Camcam’s rapid and fearful pulse, and swaying westward toward Manolo’s slow, exultant breaths. When she landed, her eyelids opened like the pages of a book, looking inward to read itself, thirsty and expectant for knowledge. She swayed hesitantly before Tala, staring into the bride’s face, and for a moment the flames stopped dancing on their wicks; the thread binding the circle seemed to snap. The babaylan’s look changed from intoxication to confusion to something like pain, and her body seemed to harden, no longer a fluid thing as she froze into a tree that was no longer ancient but brittle; her bones looked so stiff that Luchie feared she’d died on the spot, and Datu complained that she’d turned into stone. Tala let out a high-pitched wail, lolling it with her tongue to play, and the flames wiggled their tips once more. Iolana gasped at the girl’s insolence; Lourdes burst into giggles; Manolo raised an eyebrow and smiled. The babaylan’s eyes widened, the girl’s voice like sap for a dry tree, tickling her nerves, unwinding her once more; she threw her head upward in a howl that was laughter. Then she lavished the bride with attention, rubbing Tala’s head with balms, stroking her forehead moist and slicking the surface of her hair. She began to dance, a
nd they saw the chant and its recollections vibrating through her wiry arms and body. The children danced with her. She waved a bamboo scroll etched with writings around Tala and Manolo. She placed necklace after necklace, heavy with amulets, into the children’s hands, which they passed, one to the other, the last one placing the necklaces over Tala or Manolo’s head.
After the ceremony, they spent the rest of the afternoon feasting in the enclosure beside the babaylan’s hut, sharing the bounty of two freshly slaughtered chickens and a whole pig that had been roasting slowly over an open fire through the course of the morning and early afternoon. They ate fish stews, mountains of rice, vegetables steamed and seasoned, a medley of noodles flavored with achuete and ground pork skin, with shrimp, egg, and green onions mixed in. They drank basi and tapuey, celebrating with the gods of rice and sugarcane. Little Roland played the gongs, and all stood to dance, celebrating hand in hand into the night, Tala’s hand never far from Manolo’s, and he’d never in his life been happier.
Just as he had on their wedding day, he wanted her now. As his wife, his child’s mother, his lover, his mate, his beloved. He wanted all of her, even the woman at the river, who had flown, but never away from him, he’d begged in silence, never away from him. If he wanted to claim this life, he knew he could not hide any longer, not even now, when Tala, too, was hiding. And that was the worst of his pain. Knowing that she, too, was hiding, losing her way from the uninhabitable place that was hers alone. How had it happened? And, now, Charo. He would not let Charo win.
Manolo got up from the sofa. All the lights in the house were off, but he found his way easily between the outlines of walls to where Tala was lying sideways in bed with her back to the door. He slipped beneath the covers, pressing his body against hers and wrapping his arm across her inflated belly. She tensed at first, then relaxed, breathing slow and even. Tala was still awake.
The Hour of Daydreams Page 15