The baby wails from the bedroom.
‘Pilar, what’s with our Eya? Is she wet — there are fresh nappies in the basket, just under the bed — ’
The wail escalates, ripples the heat.
‘What lungs — oh, yes, get her the bottle, Pilar, it’s in the kitchen, cooling in the large pot — can you see it — Pilar — Pilar — now where’s that girl?’
The wail is unrelenting. It seeks out every corner of the airless house, every little secret, every little ache.
Madre de Dios, hurry up bum and get it over and done with! Ay, it’s so much better out there with the ferns.
Chapter 12
Outside Pilar is deaf to all the noises of the house. She is hiding and practising the rudiments of hating me, the bald thing that killed her best friend. I hear her thoughts rising to the trees — dear reader, spy with me.
‘I want to come to the funeral. No, I don’t want to watch over the baby. I want to be with Carmen for the last time,’ Pilar protested to her mother earlier, but to no avail. Now she wills the whole orchard to fret with her, to play truant from its lone preoccupation, growth. This singleness of purpose has kept the trees indifferent to her affliction. She will shake each of them if she can, scare all their ripening away so they would notice her, because since that bald arrival, no one does anymore. Not in that house where they talk in whispers, those intimate murmurings that are never for her. But if Carmen were here, she’d whisper just for me and make the pebble in my throat go away. She’d magic this painful thing away, just like that.
They sent her to the other room, but she saw through a hole on the wall. And she heard all of it. Lola Trining praying the rosary, Mamay Dulce bending over Carmen, and the huge basin of hot water turning red. Carmen was screaming, tearing at her hair, bunching it with her fists then rubbing them on her balloon belly — no, she was hitting it, she hated it! She wanted to rise from the bed, but Lola Trining held her down while Mamay ordered, ‘Push, push, more this time, child, push!’
Under the guava trees Pilar shuts her eyes tight, but still the scene continues — a red, wrinkled rat without hair popped out, just like that. Wet and dirty and tied to her with a rope which they cut. Then they smacked it to make it cry, that’s why it got so angry and made her die.
Pilar had adored Carmen. Her best friend had the longest, blackest hair in the village. It reached down to the back of her knees. Lola Trining said that a long time ago ankle-length hair was so common, but soon all the young girls wanted to cool their napes and look like city girls. Except Carmen. Very straight and thick as rope when braided, her hair shone a midnight black. Pilar attended to it like an enamoured slave. In the river she washed the strands with coconut milk and lemon, then with lime leaves and flowers. What a joy to care for such beauty, who always cared back. They bathed together, a pair of laughing fish darting in and out of the river, the little girl clinging to her best friend’s hair because she couldn’t swim. Then on the rock in the middle of the water, they dozed together on a blanket of such soft, such sweet fragrance.
But early last year Carmen began to act funny, always with that crooked smile when she came home alone with her hair wet. No, she doesn’t bathe in the river anymore, so Pilar can’t come along. Then one day her smile went upside down, bent the other way and slid down, down from the corner of her lips. Then she began to swell. ‘The wind, Pilar, a trick of the wind,’ her best friend had sighed for nine months until that bald thing killed her!
Pilar traces Carmen’s upside-down smile on her own cheek. It is wet and quivering. Under the guava trees, the dead girl’s best friend is hiding. She is squatting on her heart. No one must know that she has smelled the conspiracy: the bald one against its mother and now her own Mamay Dulce against her because of the bald one. Her brother Bolodoy likes it too, always cooing to it, bringing it presents. Ay, that rat!
On the hottest of summers, Pilar is hiding the pebble in her throat. It’s difficult to breathe, no wind at all. One can whistle for it, but it won’t come, and the pebble gets in the way, so it hurts to whistle anyway. No, the wind won’t come; it had its time of ferrying pollens. The orchard must now ripen on its own. The coffee berries can dust themselves red, the cacao can grow plump with its honey seeds soon sweet enough for sucking, and the fragrant guavas must fall alone. Unable to hang on to their branches any longer, they spill their pink gut on the sweltering earth.
Pilar picks up a guava, bites it. Ah, that brat’s little toe! But then she spits, almost choking, and hurls the fruit away. Ay, ay, stupid me! Careful now — what do the old folks say? You must never, ever touch any round fruit when someone has just died, or you’ll grow an ugly goiter! Bigger than this pebble, more painful, more deadly, because it will keep you from swallowing, then you can’t eat, then of course you’ll die. She spits and spits, now distracted from the ache in her throat but not for long.
‘Aha, here you are, you little devil — I told you not to leave Eya alone!’
Pilar yelps in surprise as her mother drags her by the ear. ‘Mamay, Mamay, it hurts, ayyyyyy!’
Not quite drained yet from her miracles, Dulce shakes the truant.
‘Not by the ear, please, Mamay, not by the ear, ay, ay!’ For the first time, Pilar feels safe to weep and blame the wetness of her cheeks on this tormented ear. ‘Mamay, it hurts — please stop — ’
‘Mother of God, where did you get this hardheadedness?’
‘From you, Mamay, where else — ay, that hurts — please — ayyyy!’
‘You dare answer back, demonyita — you little devil!’
The child is sobbing now, clinging to her mother’s skirt, hoping to be cuddled, longing to be asked about the pebble in her throat, wishing for all the love that was denied her these past days to return. Wishing Carmen alive and not swelling, and bathing in the river as she rides on her net of hair with little fishes darting about.
‘Why did you leave the baby? You useless little devil!’ The mother vents her rage on a little ear.
‘Ay, so painful, Mamay — please, stop, please — araguyyyyyyyy!’ Pilar’s wail is echoed by a more insistent cry from the house.
‘Santisima, what now? My sweet Jesus, our Estrella — coming, Eya, lovely Eya!’ Mamay Dulce lets loose her singsong in a flurry of affection as she runs back to the house, abandoning the red ear, the heartbroken supplicant who stamps her foot and raises her fist, believing herself truly and twice the devil that her mother proclaimed her to be. She brushes her tears away, snorts at the house and clambers up a guava tree.
From the east a brief wind disturbs the orchard and the cicadas begin to sing: a change of heart, a change of heart.
Chapter 13
Tell me, my love, what is a change of heart? Is it a confusion of ventricles? Left chamber mistaking itself for the right and the right believing itself to be left, thus disarming desire? In my mind, I was uttering some vague plea to the sergeant whose mouth had sulked into silence. In another time his would have been an endearing pout after a lovers’ quarrel. A kissable pucker, sure to translate into passion after a little cariño, a bit of affectionate persuasion.
Cariño brutal. His M-16 lightly brushing my arm.
Sergeant Ramon preferred the long arm. He thought little pistols were mere accoutrement. His steps were sure, measured. Far behind, his two men followed, holding the ends of my hair. They marched as if in a major offensive towards the river. Around us the fireflies kept guard, violence dressed as salvation. What hopeful word, the sibilants a gentle hush: salvacion. The soldiers and the rebels spoke of this same cause, even as they remained in opposite camps, and our village festered in between. We were the narrow space that deepened into a groove between the right and the left ventricle.
The left and the right, left, right, left, right: the cadence of politics in uniform, marching head on towards each other to redeem the tiny village in between. Consider their intent: to salvage a village. Consider the word: ‘salvage’. From the Latin salvare: ‘rescue, retriev
e, preserve from loss or destruction’. But in Iraya, we whispered salvage with a weight in the tongue, sinking the word like a body thrown into the river. Liquidated, made liquid, made to disappear. Such was our new definition of the word.
Salvage: summarily execute.
Wooed by political cariño from the eye of a gun, our beloved village disappeared in the bid for salvation by the rebels and the military. Beloved: Pa-da-ba. Three birds shot down in mid-flight. All ‘salvaged’ ones, someone’s father, son, sweetheart, wife. I found them in the water. Which hand did they serve or repudiate? The left or the right? Which hand pulled the trigger? Listen, I must tell stories about dying in mid-speech, mid-love, mid-air, so you can tell them back to me. Perhaps the shots would ring clearer, if not truer. And when death becomes certain, love might just be completed.
‘Hoy, wait for me!’
I was pulled back from the arguments that had seized my heart. Someone was tugging at my hair, a painful violation, similar to the sensation of recall. My scalp stung.
One of the men was yelling, ‘Stop, stop!’ He had tripped on a lock of growing hair. ‘Putang ina, what monster are you, woman?’
‘Save the talk and keep walking.’ Sergeant Ramon hardly changed his pace, intent on our destination.
We descended into a dry ravine, heavy with foliage and fireflies, and secrets. Above us hung a canopy of giant bamboo and cabbage ferns like towering umbrellas, all defined in light. We made slow progress. The clumps of kogon grass were incandescent sentinels, keeping us back. The balangubang vines, like creeping tinsel, grabbed at our arms and feet. And as if to conspire in this truant growth, my hair curled among the shimmering tendrils, the haloed leaves.
‘Putang buhok!’ The two men swore at my hair, untangling it from the vines. They lagged behind. Soon their curses grew faint.
Around us, a cool wetness as if the vegetation secretly perspired. ‘Damp, good damp,’ the sergeant mumbled. His shoulder eased under the rifle strap.
‘Not this path, Ramon,’ I said.
Long ago we always took a different route when Mamay Dulce sent us to fetch water from the river. ‘Not that way,’ she would caution us. ‘There the wild bamboo is a rascal spirit in disguise. It comes alive and blocks your way, muddling your sense of direction. When this happens, you must turn your clothes inside out so you can find your way home.’
‘Let’s take the shorter route,’ I begged the sergeant.
‘But it’s safe here, hidden,’ he insisted.
The fireflies multiplied, no longer darting about but gathering in a dazzling swarm and keeping almost still, flying yet not flying, as if drugged by the moist air.
‘Tell me about your lemon grass lover,’ he said, lightly resting his hand on my shoulder.
‘Tell me about how you made our river smell,’ I countered.
From a distance, an owl called. I shivered, or was it a tingle, as the sergeant stroked my skin.
‘You liked the white man too much, Estrella … ’
The bamboo’s rascal spirit was up to its tricks again. It led me astray as he rubbed my arm, allowing his palm to be shaped by a hunched shoulder, elbow, fist, as if he had lost the grasping fervour, as if he were almost tender — sálvame! Save me from this moment. The landscape must not write my fate any further. But my heart was coaxed out again and memory bled a reply, coagulating and stretching to the scalp.
Why is history more present than the present, the old stories more acute, more in the flesh? Why is memory so fickle? Perhaps time tricks memory, or is it memory that tricks time? And then the final trickery on this page — is this all that remains of my life, my love?
Be still, my heart, be still, my hair.
Chapter 14
As we approached the clearing, I felt someone cooking under my scalp. Ay, this little circuit of remembering: that leap in the heart shooting up to scalp and growing into another handspan of hair. ‘Very tricky hair, very tricky heart’ indeed. Mamay Dulce’s singsong as she stirred lemon grass into her purple fish sauce and coconut milk with just the right dash of chilli, oregano and lime. How she extolled this ‘heavenly fragrance’.
‘Some kind of beatified rotten fish, is that what you mean, Estrella?’ Tony made it sound even better. He was proud of his educable palate. ‘Lemon grass, a wonder herb. It transforms everything,’ he declared with a gourmet’s authority. ‘And how do you call it here — tanglad? Not as poetically apt as lemon-and-grass though, a double freshness, you know what I mean?’
I nodded politely. It was his first meal in our village and we had nothing to serve but rice and beatified rotten fish.
My dear Australian, how did I come to love you, who found us strange and war-crazy? I had smelled desperation when you first arrived searching for a story, any story to put on paper. ‘This task has to be done,’ you said. So I asked, ‘But why must you write?’ ‘Because I want to pardon myself.’ Then you winked at me, a confident man and timorous boy at forty-five years old, arguing in your ignorance.
‘What are you muttering about?’ Ramon had followed the narrative on my face. Hand and tenderness withdrew. His lower lip jutted even more, this king of sulk. ‘What now?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, returning to the flying lights on his face. So youthful, except for something in the eyes, perpetually red-rimmed. Hangman’s eyes, the old folks said. Ay, you can tell if they have blood in their hands, the red is also branded on the gaze. It does not forget, nor can it be forgiven.
‘These pests are driving me crazy!’ The sergeant flailed his arms against the persistent lights but with little success.
Tony had done the same, flailed away to pardon himself. He had a way with his hands. His fingers were always theatrical, cutting or cuddling air, executioner and lover-like all at once, then folding in supplication. How his hands flew, now crows, then doves. I longed so much to catch them, to still them in my breast.
To pardon myself. You made it sound so simple, Tony. Listen, I too am seeking absolution in this confession of memories. Pardon for my growing hair. Ay, make me bald again, retrieve this endless span of memory. Mother, take me back to your womb and beg the wind to behave itself. But she died when I was born and grandmother died of grief a year after. Those days they could still die of grief. The heart still had the full capacity to break at the seams, because griefs were fewer and far between. Sorrow came as a surprise amidst abundant joy — Tony wanted a story out of this hushed talk, so I told him about my ancestry. It all began with the perfect love triangle: the lord, the handmaid of the lord, and the handmaid’s maid. The mayor, his wife, and my mother Carmen.
Francisco ‘Kiko’ Estradero was our ‘absent mayor’, who came to Iraya only for holidays and hunting wild boars. Wild pork crackling, he loved it! Mayor Kiko was a doctor in the city of Rodriguez, three hours drive from our village where the Estraderos owned a coconut plantation, a coffee farm, a summer chalet and a private army. We basked in awe when these city gods descended on us with their shiny shoes and guns, their skin untouched by the sun. We gawked at these mestizos, translating their ‘verrry whiteness’ into beauty, into honour. They had bought enough influence to silence forever the earlier speculations. Ay, didn’t you know, Mayor Kiko’s great-great-grandfather was a Spanish friar whose sacred vows were overtaken by a gold rush in this region. Certainly not, he was a rich Don from España who did some prospecting here. You mean a holy-holy Don, hah!
‘The Estraderos smelled,’ Mamay Dulce used to say, ‘like vats of coconut oil.’ An aging, sweetish scent, rancid and lush, which my mother had swooned into — or did she? Or was it his paleness that kindled her skin and made her warm all over? His white milk pouring over her black coffee, as we were wont to tease some couples with clashing skin tones. Coffee-milk: kape-gatas. And they percolated in desire?
On the day Kiko was proclaimed Mayor of Iraya, my mother was nearly fourteen. That same year he and his wife Nenita met her for the first time in the river where they were having a picnic. To them, Carmen w
as ‘the dark, laughing fish’ with hair rippling the water and netting the little girl Pilar.
So how did my mother laugh? Why like a fish? Was she like the gui, its mouth clinging to stones, to suck out their secret mirth while her fin-hair waved the flag of destiny? Did her skin glisten, turn silvery-flirtatious like an eel’s? Was she as elusive? Or did she flash her gaze bravely like the wide-eyed bigok, with gills around her heart? Did it perform a fish-somersault for the mayor, with his bearded charm, when he asked her to serve at his chalet? Did he smell the lime leaves and flowers in her hair? How did he touch it the first time? Did it get caught in his lips?
The old folks said that if the river spirit Onglo makes you itch, you should seek the help of a woman with long hair. Superstition held that the unseen water-dweller could curse you if you stepped on him by mistake. You’d break out in rashes and itch for days. If this happened, you must ask Carmen to whip you with her long hair, in time with this incantation: Hale, hale, Onglo. Away, away, Onglo!
Mayor Estradero had itched in his summer chalet. It was a pleasurable discomfort not whipped out of him but tenderly scratched by his new handmaiden, a child: my mother. The copra was roasting then and the whole village indulged in its rancid sweetness. It seeped into the skin! The farmers neglected their farms and turned to their wives, wondering what scent had afflicted these breasts, this belly, the furrow between these thighs. Then on the third day of the fragrant idyll, all senses were restored to sobriety. Even Mayor Kiko rose from his affliction and returned to the city. His was a very quick affair. His wife sent the new maid packing with no outrage or tears, in that efficient manner of mistresses. The village barely noticed. Years later he flew to America after he had become persona non grata to the ruling party in the region. He left behind the scent of prime coconut oil and, for darker days, coffee.
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