The Hour of Daydreams

by Renee Macalino Rutledge

  18. Shapeshifting

  It started with a rumble, then the car was alive. In the passenger seat, Baitan imagined a safari, the car a great big eagle, its giant wings quaking across the distances of their little provincial town. He’d never seen the barrio from this angle, like he was a stranger looking in. The people and the fields glittered like something from a fairy tale, with emerald mountains guarding the periphery. No matter how used to those friendly green giants he’d become, he’d felt comforted when he looked up and saw them there where they’d always been, knowing that no hunger, sickness, or storm would ever be big enough to take them down.

  As they drove farther away, he couldn’t tell whether the mountains shrunk or grew larger—they somehow disappeared altogether. From behind the wheel, Charo said that they were on top of the mountain, above the world, and soon, they would sink back beneath it, leaving that mountain far behind. This knowledge of leaving the mountains filled Baitan with homesickness, but his pockets were full of candy, and the glittering view outside looked just as sweet.

  Baitan had grown up curious of other children grouped in uniforms with straight white collars, the girls in pleated skirts, the boys in ironed navy slacks. He did not go to any school, though he would’ve liked to. His teacher was the reprimanding store owner who chased him across the square, beating him on the shoulders and head with the straight end of a broom. Or the one who watched him steal and later hinted at the big houses and all their precious loot. His classroom was a maze of stalls; he knew which hallways to avoid, how to rotate the vendors he stole from like subjects on a schedule. There was a routine to follow, and the daily onslaught of change, good or bad, that he learned from most.

  On every street, there were the very poor and the very rich, and he knew which side he walked on. He did not attempt to cross that boundary. He accepted his role, believing that the gamble happened when you were born, and everyone owned as much as chance allowed. Some people were just luckier.

  Until that day, Baitan had never been inside a private car. The closest thing he’d gotten was a ride on a jeepney stuffed with passengers and painted on the outside with a colorful forest scene. Now he chewed contentedly on his fifth caramel. Teeth sticking, he did not think of the material things that had eluded him all his life as he sat upright in the seat, leaning with his arm against the upholstered door.

  He knew nothing of makes and models and never imagined owning something as shiny or expensive as the vehicle he sat in. He was a thoughtful child, captivated by the way things worked. But he took the mechanics of a car for granted, like the biology of a human body, its every cell working in conjunction with every organ, never sleeping, even while the one who owned it slept.

  The novelty was not in the car’s lines or texture, but the quick flashes of scenery, the journey across a landscape he had only known inches at a time. He chewed the view with his eyes, swallowing it whole, never wanting to forget its flavors. Even the buses he’d taken with his mama screeched regularly to a halt like complaining old-timers with aching joints. Here the faces he recognized from the market, from the bus, from his daily meanderings, appeared and just as quickly disappeared in a blur of motion. Before stepping into the car he was among those faces on the same plane; now, he was in a parallel universe. One that traveled through space, and quickly. The scattered houses, the green fields and sprawl had never been this wide, this big while he was on foot. He began to discern a sequential order to things, absent of boundaries, house beside house beside hill beside river beside tree beside kalabaw, all in a line that never ended and never looked the same. He knew that witnessing this line was a privilege. He was conscious of looking farther along the line than he had ever seen, and all within a half hour’s time. This feeling, one of mobility, aroused in him something glowing and hopeful that he did not recognize as potential. It was the same calling that had tempted him to get into the car with Charo. The possibility that life could be different, better.

  At the same time, his heart felt heavy leaving those mountains, the only friends he’d known aside from Tala, and the fairy-tale barrio, one he’d never known was a fairy tale until then, starved nights, chase-downs from the vendors, and all.

  The scenery flew by, too quickly, he realized. He felt sick to his stomach and asked Charo to please slow down. Then he closed his eyes and placed his head down against the door as waves of dizziness hit him. His “godfather” lit a cigarette and told him it served him right for eating too much candy. Godfather—it was all a game. He knew how to play along, how to play this lowly hustler who thought he held all the strings. Outside the car, the world glowed, and he knew it was there, could feel it was there with so many pathways to explore, but from inside the car he started to feel as if the sunshine and motion were beginning to close in on him. He thought of his mother and regretted the worry he was causing her. Since the beginning of the journey, he had not stopped thinking of her. She’d stayed in his thoughts like a tree he leaned against, always there, supporting the arch of his back.

  He’d hesitated leaving the barrio, wanting to talk to his mother first, but Charo had said business was pressing and they had to ditch this backwater ASAP. “Do you want your life to pass you by in these dead-end streets? Do you want to be a worthless thief forever? Do you want to be hungry all the time while everyone else around you gets fat?”

  Now he regretted leaving so abruptly. He’d have to call the sari sari store at the first pay phone, find someone to relay the message to his mother.

  Charo had said he would take him off his mother’s hands, helping her by helping him, teaching him how to make a future for them both. Did he have a godfather? He would be one, the godfather who gave him everything, who was even better than an actual father. Baitan recognized the falsehood—from complete stranger to father was an overzealous leap. But this Charo had something to offer, and the offers weren’t pouring in for a drop-out kid, so he’d taken the candy and hopped into the car. The rooftops and the new maze of streets, the pedicabs and exotic foods—all of this beckoned him like a carnival’s colorful illusions.

  Charo did not slow down, and the car sped through the high and winding roads just as quickly as before. Baitan clutched at his abdomen.

  “Stupid kid, you ate too much candy.” Charo handed him a cigarette then turned his face toward the tip to light it with his own.

  By now, Baitan could inhale the smoke without coughing, but the candy turned in his belly. Candy and cigarettes, Charo said, would be his thing. He would sell them from a tray strapped to his neck, making a nice profit, and he could even keep a quarter of the tips, but the more important job would be to deliver messages to and from the factory. These would mostly come from the mouths of rich, horny businessmen or worthless thieves, and he’d quickly learn how to stay one step ahead of their predictable, perverted thoughts, unless he wanted to indulge them and make an even bigger payday, but that was something they could talk about later.

  He began to think of Tala and how she’d bought every little thing in his basket. He would replace that basket with another, still hawking petty trifles. Was this really moving up in the world? Charo began to whistle, and Baitan realized how much he disliked the sound and especially, its source.

  He could not stop the car or make a jump for it. He would have to watch the landscape change and change along with it. He would make money, lots of it, and he knew more than Charo could teach about how to earn tips—which pitying faces to approach, how hungry to appear. He would keep quiet and learn what he needed to, learn what to hate and what never to trust again, and all along he would be in camouflage, disguised in the brush as part of the scene, and when the wilderness left a clearing or the smallest opening of light, he would fly, back to Tala, back to the friendly green giants, back to his mother, back home.

  19. A Dream

  Tala had grown rounder by the day, to a point of fullness that seemed impossible. Her body, so transformed, pacified Manolo, as if he somehow shared the womb and all its p
romises for protection with their sleeping child. He welcomed every stretch mark and centimeter that stretched her skin.

  “This is no place for a pregnant woman,” she complained, her waddle more exaggerated than before as she swatted the groping arms of trees and crossed overgrown roots jutting up from the soggy ground. “And I don’t have the energy for our pretend games. Let’s turn around and window-gaze with Luchie while your mom makes us a snack.”

  “Okay—no more pretending for the pregnant, hungry lady, and we’ll head back soon,” he said, crunching beside her across a melody of leaves, twigs, and pebbles. “When the baby comes, we won’t have time to come back here, where we first met.” He held her by the waist, guiding her to a clearing where they could take in the fresh, earthy fragrance of the river and find comfort in the trees’ embrace.

  Tala, days away from her twentieth birthday, was different from the woman he’d encountered just two years before. He remembered how slender she had been, how she’d swallowed him whole with those eyes. She had sat and waded, waded and watched, and all alone under the stars she’d been exposed and unprotected, with a future so uncertain it pained him. Her arms were plumper now, her face fuller, and her hair shorter, but the biggest change of all was her ownership, of herself and the life in her womb she’d be responsible for. This Tala knew her rightful place under the sun, no matter how endlessly it raged, and alongside this river, even if it were long enough to wrap its legs around the planet, procreating with the earth itself. She would no longer cower beside it; she would dip her toes in and let it cool her.

  She possessed the same watchfulness, a stare that could burn through flesh, straight into the fragile, pulpy mess of your heart. The same gift for tenderness he knew she reserved for a chosen few whom she would never neglect in deeds, words, or choices. The same haughtiness, as only someone who has traveled a long and savage distance can possess, knowing they have the will and wherewithal to do so again should the need arise. Only now, maturity had caught up with her—domesticity, sex, duty, and the confidence that comes with certainty. All of these things helped shape and tame the wildness and searching he had found in her and loved and still reached for beneath the bed covers and in the uninhabitable roving of her eyes.

  And this was why he brought her here, now, again, for this uninhabitable place he could never hope to reach or curl into or cry for. This mystery and the depths we choose to dive in order to find it, claim it, live it—the life we could breeze through like visitors, or the life we could sweat for and fight to keep and quiver against, truly waking with every ravenous taste bud and sweaty pore.

  She had taken off her shoes. She sat in front of the river, with one leg bent beneath her and the other extended as she eased a foot through the water in a languorous glide. She propped her weight against one arm, her other hand resting on her oversized belly. The birds called from high in the treetops, the water gurgled, and the clicking of insects and impossibly fast wings buzzed around them. She looked so peaceful, resting her head to one side. He walked toward her.

  “I saw you here, you know. Before we met. I saw you here and watched you with the other women—your sisters, right?”

  She turned to face him, searching his face, his eyes.

  “I know what you can do. I saw everything, saw you fly away each night.”

  She smiled weakly and returned to gliding her foot slowly through the water. “I told you, Manolo. I don’t feel like playing pretend games. Not today.”

  “But I saw you. I know it’s true.” His voice rose up quickly, his breathing quickened. He kneeled down close to face her, to turn her toward him. She touched his cheek.

  “I remember,” she said. “How we met here. You had fallen asleep by the riverbank. For hours, I looked for my necklace in the water and watched you while you slept. Then I forgot about my necklace and waited for you to wake up. I sat close to you, memorizing your mouth while it was still and watching the movement underneath your eyelids, like fish darting underwater. I was fascinated by that and imagined that your eyes were searching through the land of dreams. What could this man be dreaming of? This man I did not know, but whose dreams I longed for with the intimacy of a lover. My longing surprised me—its sudden arrival, its brashness. When you woke up, you spoke to me. You told me what you’d seen. You’d seen my face, my sisters’ faces . . . many sisters’ faces . . . you told me about my wings, my flying. You told me how you never wanted to wake up. And then you told me, somehow, I had become real, following you into life. But it was all just a dream, Manolo, a dream.”

  20. She Leaves, Returns

  On the outskirts of the farm houses, where the back-bending pain of working the land could be numbed with drink, where the wives grew tipsy enough to smoke with their husbands, and where the familiar faces of the fields, shops, and nearby offices met over karaoke, bad gin, fritter plates, and gossip, the smug-faced thugs appeared nightly.

  They’d arrived like louder, stockier versions of their predecessor: three men in leather jackets and shiny shoes who chain-smoked and asked too many questions. Unlike Charo, who’d slipped through like an eel that left the faintest trace of a ripple, they did not distance themselves from their surroundings. They claimed their right to the countryside’s bounty and reputation for hospitality—smacking the vendors’ backs while sprinkling their countertops with ash, complimenting the women’s figures with booming voices, gliding their fingertips along the shiny edges of knives as they boasted of the fights they’d won, splashing around town with no regard to who noticed or how often. They announced themselves as compadres of Tala’s brother, as if this association qualified them into Manlapaz’s extended family. They asked for freebies, directions to loose women, refills on tequila shots; they received curt responses and no invitations.

  Two of the men were obviously running the show; the third was the fun-seeking tagalong, someone to break the ice and keep things amicable between his more serious companions. They stayed at a boardinghouse near the entrance to the bar where they drank nightly. Sometimes, they brought women from the surrounding barrios to drink and carouse with in dark corners. The locals began to talk, warning their daughters, sisters, and wives that these low-lifes were recruiting women, sweet young faces they could corrupt into returning with them to the underbelly of Tagarro Bay. This was not far from the truth. It soon became apparent that the men pursued a specific roster of ladies. With the same loud voices and carefree manner, they pinpointed ages, heights, a dimple on one cheek for this girl, a sassy attitude on that girl. The most vigilant observers in the bar described every conversation with them like an interview—far from careless or casual, as they depicted themselves to be. From behind cold, calculating eyes and refilled glasses, these men fished for clues, hungry for a lead.

  The shadows Charo had left behind became a regular topic of conversation between Iolana, Camcam, and Lourdes on the Lualhatis’ back porch as they played cards, traded vegetables from their respective gardens, or shared tsismis over hot coffee and steaming pork buns. Manolo, overhearing the women and filled in on more of the same from his patients, considered the newcomers—the places they frequented while avoiding his house or any involvement in his family’s affairs. Rather than deeming them a threat, he considered them irrelevant, inferior. Tala, who had little to say on the subject, must have felt the same.

  Around this time, she developed a string of new habits, which Manolo pondered in detail on the night she failed to come home by dinner. Uneasy at the sight of his wife’s empty chair, a first in nearly two years of marriage, Manolo had not been able to eat a bite of Iolana’s beef steak with caramelized onions. He usually went overboard with three servings of this dish, but that night he stared at his plate, seeing nothing but grease sweating from the meat, the rice, the onions.

  Worried about their daughter-in-law’s whereabouts, his parents couldn’t help referring to the bar at the edge of their neighborhood and its frequent, unsavory clientele. Manolo’s worries had other roots, but t
o appease them and to leave no possibility unchecked, he walked to that smoky room after dinner, finding, as he’d expected, no trace of her. Two of the pathetic thugs in question occupied the barstools, their faces haggard and their lips wrapped around cigarettes. The third was passed out at a table like a schoolboy, his head resting against his arms.

  Night fell without Tala’s return, and Manolo relegated himself to the room they shared, wrestling with his thoughts and his solitude. The flower-picking was just the beginning, he thought, lining the clues to a mystery together, convinced that her absence was not unavoidable, but part of a greater scheme that she had ingrained herself in willingly.

  In the past week or so, Tala would leave before breakfast, keeping to the brown fence, following its path to the edge of their cul-de-sac, where she lingered at the wild bunches growing in clumps beside the old maid’s house. On some mornings, Andres accompanied her on these domestic rituals, chatting contentedly about the hard work of his railroad days or of the heartsick months when he’d courted Iolana, or nodding his already-pomaded head about one of the fictional characters Tala loved to discuss—her fear and rapture of Bronte’s Rochester, her anguished sympathy for Hardy’s Tess. Other mornings, she’d go out alone, putting Manolo’s sweatshirt on over her nightdress and slipping out the front door without brushing her teeth.

  At eight months pregnant, she’d begun to let certain particulars in her hygiene slip. She had never been one to spend hours in front of a mirror and typically wore little makeup. The smocks she’d recently sewn for her vastly expanding size were hastily pieced together with scraps of leftover cloth. She preferred to spend her money on fabric for the baby or on knickknacks, complete in and of themselves, like hand-painted teacups she could cradle in her hands, sweet-smelling soaps, or leather-bound journals she would never write in.