“We’ve been called many things,” he told me once. “Backward, provincial, superstitious. We are not superstitious—we simply believe what we see. A tree is a tree is a tree. A rock is a rock. I’ve come to learn that Manlapaz is no ordinary place. It is a way station.”
It had been the hour of daydreams. We had walked to the mailbox, and as we idled our way back, the houses had stood like props along the empty road, which crunched underfoot as busy songbirds scrambled about, their trills especially lively. Grandfather shared another story from his vault of words reserved especially for me. They filled up the silence, not the one that blanketed our barrio during the napping hours when everyone disappeared in their rooms, but the one that had followed me everywhere, for as long as I could remember.
“What is a weigh-station, Grandfather?” I imagined the church square covered with scales like the ones used for weighing fish and produce at the marketplace. Only these scales would be big enough to weigh people, animals, furniture, piles of brick, or sacks and sacks of money—whatever might need weighing at a weigh-station. The scales would cover the square on weekends with their platforms, ladders, and cranes used for lifting heavy objects onto them. People from all over would come on weighing days, blocking the entrance to the church and filling the square with strange inventions and wondrous contraptions.
“A way station is a place to rest and refuel before making your way to the place you intended to go.” He must have seen the disappointed look on my face, because he added, “Though it is a temporary stop, it is carefully chosen and of utmost importance for the weary traveler.”
Papa sometimes loaded me into the car to visit nearby orchards, where we’d pick our own fruits, bringing home boxes full to share with the neighbors. Or he took me along on a house call or two before driving us into the city, where we watched a movie in a theater or rode the carousel in the shopping mall. Grandfather and Grandmother did not drive, so every now and then, when Papa was not home to do the chauffeuring, they sat me between them on the bus to visit relatives or fill up our shopping bags in the market near the coast, where seafood, spices, and the shell earrings Grandmother liked to wear were easier to haggle for. In all of these instances, we did the leaving, and it never occurred to me that people who lived elsewhere got into buses and cars, making it a point to come to Manlapaz—the carefully chosen and important way station.
“Where do all the travelers eat and sleep?” I asked.
“These are no ordinary travelers. They feed on hopes and dreams; they feast on fear. They sleep during the day and wander the empty streets at night. Some of them are always hidden beneath disguises; others cannot mask their true forms and must conceal themselves beneath the ground, in the trunks of trees, or behind the clouds. Between the hours of midnight and three a.m., they are fully visible and wander about in the open. But anyone foolish enough to be out during those hours will be at their mercy. These travelers can be vicious, immeasurably strong, and dangerous. They are capable of imposing twisted enchantments and cruel, unthinkable punishments.
“They can also be beautiful and good. Even with the ugly ones, there is no reason to worry, as long as you follow the rules: Stay away from suspicious strangers. Seal your curtains well before midnight. Treat your guests like royalty, for you never know what forms they truly assume and with what powers. As for why they come here, it’s no mystery why they favor our mountains, like ladders between heaven and earth, our river like a highway through the land, and of course, our many remote hiding places and polite and accepting ways. Many of these travelers stay on indefinitely. You may tremble with revulsion and say these unwanted guests don’t belong here, that Manlapaz is ours. But in truth, they’ve been passing through for centuries, well before our earliest ancestors dipped a toe in the river or planted a seed in the fertile valley. In a way, you may even say that we are the guests.”
I learned much more about the unusual citizens with whom we shared Manlapaz. Grandfather himself had seen a duwende every day from the bedroom window of his childhood home, always sitting in the same spot on the fence at the same hour, and much later, he had seen a friend go through the second half of his life under a duwende’s spiteful spell. It infuriated him that anyone would consider him gullible, untruthful, or even infectiously bored for believing in such phantoms. He became convinced that the phenomenon witnessed in our mountains could not be isolated. In search for proof, he subscribed to a rolodex of magazines, determined to learn the landscape of faraway places, the accounts of other witnesses who’d confronted monsters, fairies, witches, and sprites. He read himself to sleep every afternoon, and hundreds of articles later, his beliefs were confirmed. There could be no doubt these way stations were scattered across the globe, from here in the Philippines to the North Pole. The travelers that frequented them had many names, but their habits and rituals were consistent and indisputable.
At the end of that summer, Grandfather died, but not before he passed on one last story, the one I had been waiting all summer to hear. By then, I already believed Tala was one of those temporary guests who’d landed in Manlapaz en route to vast and mysterious places beyond our comprehension. She never quite belonged or intended to stay, and she held in her being a magnificent power whose calling she could no longer resist.
Grandfather’s words confirmed what I knew in my heart to be true, but I didn’t realize then that this knowledge had been planted there by Grandfather himself after months of careless disillusionment.
He had probably been in considerable pain, suffering in silence through another cavity that he believed would pass, when in reality the infection would do no such thing, not dying, but spreading all the way to his brain. We no longer did any walking for candy or treats, to run errands to the mailbox, or to dangle our feet side by side along the edge of the river. As he leaned against the ceiba tree in our backyard, his eyes had been transfixed, transported to visions of that afternoon long ago, when everything had changed.
“We were resting here—against this same tree. I had just finished rocking you to sleep in my arms when the air around us came to life, a soft hiss, swirling with pain. Instinctively I held you closer, and then she appeared. There . . . at the edge of the patio, floating just a foot or so above the ground. Tala’s young features were the same but on her face glared the frightening, unrecognizable expression of a beast. Her wings were imposing and brilliant, stretched to their full width, billowy with feathers but capable of knocking a man out with one swipe. I trembled, not at her transformation and obvious power, but because I knew just by looking at her that something was terribly wrong.
“All those years, she had hidden her true nature, from her own husband, from her own child, and most likely, herself. It was the only explanation I could think of for the rage and confusion that heaved from her chest and directed her stare toward me like the point of a blade. I found no trace of the loving daughter-in-law whom I had grown to cherish. And I suspected her grief was for that very reason—she had lost herself.
“But there was no time to feel pity or fear. Her presence had woken you from your rest, and your whimpering broke her contemplation and redoubled her anguish. The veins on her once-slender neck rippled as she cried out, and the memory of that wail still sends a wave of revulsion down my spine. Then her wings sprang to motion, their pulsing sending leaves, nests, and debris adrift and swirling. She was upon you in an instant, snatching you with those claws, but just as she began to fly away, something terrible flooded over me. I would have died fighting for you. I grabbed her arms, now muscular and unwomanly, fending me off like a worthless tick. I tore into her feathers, screaming in retaliation but inaudible in the heavy gale. Each time Tala began to lift off, I rushed for her legs, and she flapped harder, releasing herself from my pathetic hold, her long hair stretching far into the wind. Just when I thought all hope was lost, you came to me. You wriggled free and jumped, right into my arms. Tala’s wings beat down, deepening the windstorm in their final, heavy strokes as sh
e flew away for good.
“She didn’t look back. Afterward, you buried your little face in my armpit, shaken but no longer crying. Afraid to renew your tears with any movement or sound, I held you that way for some time, mute and still, only to realize I was just as terrified for my own safety as for yours.”
We sat quietly against the tree for a long while, as still as I imagined we had been in Grandfather’s story. The spell of his words washed over me. Though he’d described her as a monster, in my mind she had been a beautiful monster to the end, tragic in her ugliness, and ever more so in her desperate need to flee. How lonely she must have been, I thought, and would have continued pitying her indefinitely if the next incident hadn’t occurred, the first in a string of similar incidences that redirected my pity inward.
My former playmates—the ones with whom I’d hidden and rolled in the wildflowers, played pranks on sleeping ya-yas, and failed at my first games of sipa—emerged from their hiding places behind fences or crouched among the weeds. At first I thought they’d come to reclaim me from Grandfather, still to them one of the shortsighted elders who didn’t belong in our enchanted world of the napping hours, but for whose company I’d traded all their silly games. Then I saw the rocks in their balled-up fists and the anger that twisted their faces into alarming sneers.
“Freaks!” they yelled.
“Witches!”
“Demon child!”
I managed to duck as they deployed their weapons, but Grandfather wasn’t quite as fast. As soon as they saw the blood on his forehead, they scattered. Alerted by a neighbor, Papa rushed home to tend to Grandfather’s wound. After cleaning off the blood, Papa told my grandmother that Grandfather would need a few stitches, but the cut to the head wasn’t what bothered him. In the days that followed, Grandfather’s condition deteriorated rapidly. Papa had found and removed the rotten teeth, decomposed to practically nothing, but the tests showed that Grandfather’s blood was poisoned, and Papa’s best medicine was no match for the infection.
Two weeks after Grandfather’s funeral, I started school. My former playmates passed me carefully folded notes in class and tagged me during recess so I would chase them, unlocking their circle to let me in once more. I could have come back to being one of them, but I chose the opposite direction, leaving the notes unread, their gleefully fleeing backs unchased. Whatever guilt they suffered over Grandfather’s death quickly evaporated when they felt the chill of my cold shoulder. They banded together against me, recruiting the other children to their side, and I became known as the demon child with a witch for a mother.
Papa knew nothing of my troubles at school. Perhaps he was too distracted by my changed appearance in the neat, two-piece uniform and hair done in braids, for he gazed upon me as if I were a rare and exquisite doll. For the first week, he walked the mile and a half to and from school alongside me, smiling with pleasure and pride, oblivious to the fact that none of the other kids ever greeted me “hello” or “good-bye,” and many of them huddled into whispers when we passed them.
On the first day of the second week, when I was to begin walking alone, his biggest concern was that I’d get lost, so he insisted I repeat the directions several times before setting off. But finding my way was the least of my problems. I walked briskly that day to avoid an encounter with the caravan of neighborhood kids, but found myself colliding straight into them.
“Don’t have your daddy to protect you this morning, witch baby?” they taunted.
I was outnumbered but fast, racing to the protection of the school grounds before another of their words could bite me.
On the route home, having avoided all signs of them, I began to relax my breathing. That’s when they ambushed me from all sides. Someone pushed me and I crumpled easily, more from surprise than weakness. They laughed and my eyes stung.
“Where are your magic powers now?”
“Show us your fangs!”
“Why don’t you fly away?”
They searched the ground for debris (dirt, leaves, spoiled fruit) and threw it at my face, which I’d covered with both hands. They departed with a final threat:
“We’ll get you tomorrow!”
The ambushes continued all week, each time at a different spot along my route home. Had I known any detours, I would gladly have taken them, but Papa had shown me only one route to and from school, and as much as I dreaded the taunting, coupled by a smattering of leaves or dirt thrown my way, I was more afraid of losing my way and worrying Papa. Each night at dinner he asked how my day at school had been, that same look of pleasure and pride lifting the corners of his eyes.
“How are you enjoying your classes?” he would ask.
“I’m ahead in reading.” I had learned my letters early on, for Grandfather had shown me the alphabet and simple word recognition in his magazines. “Teacher says I’m smart enough to be a doctor like you.”
And the corners of Papa’s eyes would rise even higher.
Before long, the name calling and dirt throwing escalated. I don’t remember which kid hit me, for I’d been covering my face with my hands when the stick flew. Arriving home with a swollen lip, I had no choice but to tell Papa everything.
Though he did not say much, he absorbed every word.
The next day, I was crestfallen when Papa told me to run along to school without offering to walk me. I set off, and the morning came and went without incident. The school day unfolded in a haze, my stomach twisting into knots during the last few hours before the final bell. My lip had healed overnight for the most part, but I couldn’t stop biting on the tiny nub that remained of my wound.
They waited in the cluster of trees where they had surrounded me on the first day, but before they could hurl their first insult, a woman approached and redirected their attention completely. Her white hair fell to her knees, framing a face that had been swallowed up by wrinkles. But her eyes revealed her power, beady and intense, taking us all in. She looked a hundred years old. I willed my body to run away or scream, but I could not move or speak or unpeel my eyes from the sight of her. Equally paralyzed, each of my classmates turned varying shades of white. She scowled and raised both hands in a pouncing gesture, and we instantly unfroze, our hearts in our throats as we ran for our lives.
“Curse your wicked little hearts with worms if you bother Malaya again!” she threatened before they had fled too far to hear.
At the sound of my name I flinched and considered looking back, but instead I ran harder. I would not let myself be deceived by an evil ghost.
When she showed up at home, I was alarmed, but remembered Grandfather saying ghosts rarely attack you in your own home. Papa introduced her to me as Babaylan Jasmin, a direct descendant of the first tribe to have peopled our islands. She knew many, many secrets that were guarded within our mountains. And she had married my parents. I was all curiosity once I’d gotten over my fear of her. I wanted to know all about the first tribe and the ghosts of the world that Grandfather had spoken of. I did not expect to hear the things she told me about my mother, the powers that billowed within her, unbeckoned, overshadowed by the forces of love.
“So you see, Malaya. You can’t blame the children completely. The stories are true in the sense that she was not a creature of this world.”
True or untrue, I did not care. The babaylan lost her charm at the mention of my mother, and from that point on I realized that none of the ghosts were real, like the old woman sitting crumpled before me, powerless and finite.
And like my mother, who had the might to haunt me only because of the stories, passed on to make believers out of the innocent, to replace our sadness with awe. I would no longer be tricked. I would no longer be one of them.
23. Many Colors
I came to appreciate Grandmother Iolana, her backbone and strength, and how what I’d once considered harsh or unforgiving was necessary for living a practical, decent life. In time, taunting from my classmates became a distant memory—they left me to my peace, and
with this I found pleasure rather than pain in loneliness. While those at school rarely mentioned my mother or forgot about her completely, she remained lodged within me like a hard rock with sharp edges. As the years passed, the rock did not dissolve, but grew more compact and heavy.
Outrageous stories lost their allure; fairy tales were not enchanting, but dark and deceptive. On the occasions we gathered with Grandfather Roland and my “cousins,” Grandfather Roland’s grandchildren, for a day of feasting, I relocated to a solitary corner when talk grew sentimental or when fantasies of the supernatural sprung from their merry mouths.
Under Grandmother’s wing, I learned how to supplement our meals with roots and vegetables I’d nursed in our backyard. By the time I was ten, I could cook our dinners from scratch, from the radishes I pulled from the ground, sliced, and boiled until their color became translucent to the tamarind I dried and powdered to flavor the broth.
Not wishing to deprive me of the energy and company of other children, Papa sent me to my cousins’ house on weekends. There, I caught up on the latest dance moves and adolescent gossip and developed a sense of what it must feel like to be a regular girl. I came to love my cousin Jorella, who was five years my senior, for her boundless energy and natural compassion. Back at home, though, the sense of isolation from the world grew more pronounced, and I spent more and more time in the classroom gazing out the windows. Just as my classmates had long given up on me, my teachers began to do the same, saving the effort of constantly redirecting me to leave me to my musings.
At twelve, my hips and waist began to change, and my monthly bleeding started, but my mind outpaced the body’s slow evolution. I was desperate to understand the meaning of things, my identity and circumstances. In quiet frustration, I often fell asleep with my cheeks streaked in tears.
The Hour of Daydreams Page 19