Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  Mamay Dulce marches him away from the child, towards the sacks of rice behind the door, and whispers her accusation. ‘So, you’re going to tell me now that this hairlessness was God’s punishment of the mother, inherited by the bastard daughter — sige, say it, say what everyone else has already said. It’s been a while since I heard it — your turn now, right?’

  She’s irresistible, he thinks, when she lectures in her singsong. ‘But, Dulce, we’ve tried everything.’ He is at her mercy.

  She scans the deeply browned face and easily finds the flicker of guilt in the eyes, the drop of the jaw, that obvious admission. She turns away. Once again she hears the echo of condemnatory condolences at a funeral five years ago. Remember Maria Magdalena, the fallen woman with beautiful hair?

  ‘You’re just like them.’

  ‘But she became a saint when she washed His feet with perfume and her hair, you know that, so maybe … some … some reversal of fate or something, who knows,’ he mutters to himself and half collapses on a sack of rice, all his despondence weighing him down. And all the jars of herbs and biscuits, the novenas and beer, the candies and medicinal stones, the sweet potatoes and incantations, the holy water and instant coffee — all bearing down on him. In this healing place and variety store, the medicine man has failed again and he’s sick at heart.

  ‘I thought you were our friend,’ Mamay Dulce admonishes him, then beckons to the child who’s savouring the last crumbs. ‘We’re going home, come, Eya.’

  The thick, gluey mixture is brusquely wiped off the tiny head. Estrella doesn’t mind, she’s used to this. Five years of failed magic. She stares at the fallen mess on the floor. She can’t be a hawker of fragrances today.

  Pay Inyo stands by the door, ruminating over the history of his patient. Since I buried her mother, I’ve chanted all my special prayers against evil spirits, sprinkled even my prize rooster’s blood on this bare scalp, made endless offerings of my finest dishes in the name of all growing things, concocted my best potions, but still no hair, not a stubble or a strand, or even a hint of black root somewhere. Still stubbornly naked as a clay pot’s bum. So on her fifth year, I decide to confront this head’s history, because that’s the only thing I know, but Dulce, ay, my stubborn sweetness, is brewing up a storm.

  Estrella plays with the herbularyo’s most recent concoction: six different herbs now splattered on the dark earth, quite unidentifiable in their crushed state. Just a soggy, greenish mass divested of its magical intentions, more like carabao shit. She tests it with a finger, then finger to mouth — she spits, making a face.

  ‘How much?’ Mamay Dulce takes out the money kerchief from under her blouse.

  ‘No, don’t bother, please — ’

  ‘No, nothing for free, Pay Inyo.’ Her usual reply for the past five years, yes, a little show of face but always overtaken by poverty. She accepted every free treatment, until now. ‘I’ll pay, at least for the medicine.’ She counts the coins.

  ‘How about aloe vera then and — and five novenas to Saint Jude? What do you think? He’s the patron saint of lost causes … ’ he suggests.

  ‘Estrella is not a lost cause!’

  ‘You’re really angry at me now, truly-truly.’

  ‘Here, three pesos,’ she pushes the coins into his hands.

  ‘Why not Saint Rita then?’ he tries again.

  ‘Patron saint of impossible wishes? My God, old man, how can you even think it’s impossible — ’

  ‘Impossible can be reversed to possible — I mean — ’

  ‘You want to make it worse?’ She’s fuming now. ‘Let me tell you this, sige, lose hope and, like all the others, damn this child to eternal hairlessness, because of her poor mother’s past. But in my family, we don’t despair. Next week, I’ll see another herbularyo with better medicines and prayers that will be said without judgment.’

  ‘But five years, Dulce … ’

  ‘That’s not forever.’

  ‘You’re really angry at me now.’ ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You’re very angry, I can tell.’

  ‘Take this,’ she says, forcing more coins into his hand. ‘And I’ll ask Pilar to bring you a sack of sweet potatoes as added payment — ’

  ‘Are you truly-truly angry?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Ay, Dulce!’

  ‘I’ll send Pilar over. We’re poor, but we’re not beggars — ’

  ‘But — but — ’

  Estrella looks up at the only mother she has known and their cowed neighbour facing each other with much regret. They speak as if she can’t hear, and if she can hear, as if she can’t understand. But they forget that she has just eaten another pair of ears. She hears more than they can. Ay, it’s these sad adults who cannot hear the gecko in their throats, always repeating itself, going over and over history.

  Chapter 22

  Truly-truly, Pay Inyo loves their mother, Pilar has never doubted this. And he doesn’t mind if they raid his jars of sweets, and he helps dig sweet potatoes in their farm, that is, when he’s not digging professionally. He’s okay, this ‘Holarawnd Man’. That’s how he calls himself after a few beers and feeling relaks-na-relaks, shirt off to display the jutting ribcase, his gitara, he claims, proudly strumming the row of bones. And he loves telling the same stories over and over again, like this one.

  ‘Once upon a time, this aggressive city bum came to Iraya and had a beer too many at my store — and what happened next, children?’

  ‘He challenged you to a fight after an argument about gaming cocks,’ Pilar prompts him as she raids the jar of dilimon, sucking the hard candy two at a time, with two more sneaked into her pocket. Pay Inyo pretends he doesn’t see.

  They all know the story by heart, down to its littlest detail, even the manner in which the young man posed his challenge: ‘So you wanna fight?’ This was punctuated by an aggressive burp, followed by a double hiccup, right at Pay Inyo’s face.

  ‘A friendly mano-mano, well, why not?’ the old man agreed.

  Enemy established then, the city relic thought. So he stripped off his shirt and began parading a well-padded chest, as he flaunted his biceps. Look, real He-man, right?

  Not to be outdone, Pay Inyo did the same: took off his shirt and strutted about. But all his drinking friends and even the curious passersby, who decided to stay and watch the little drama, howled with laughter — he was stick-thin! A long-dried bamboo pole with clearly defined nodes, err, ribs.

  Pay Inyo insisted that, because this was his turf, he must set the rules of the fight, understood? Mister He-man agreed. He thought Pay Inyo was preparing for a fistfight, as he had bared his ‘muscles’. Wasn’t this the signal of ultimate aggression? But for the drinking crowd, it was a mere settling down ritual. Go topless in the heat and sweat out all that beer more comfortably.

  ‘Hokay, let’s see, what can you do, my boy?’ The old man was drunk.

  ‘I can box, Cassius Clay style, wanna see?’ The rooster started ‘dancing’ and throwing mock punches at his puny opponent.

  All clapped, imagining themselves at a ringside.

  ‘What else?’ Pay Inyo ducked a blow.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Other than boxing — you work, plant, fish, what do you do?’

  ‘We-e-ll … ’ He-man lost a bit of fire.

  ‘Yes, what else — other than dance?’ the crowd yelled.

  ‘I box … and … what else do I do … I take care of my body — see?’ He-man raised an arm to show off his biceps.

  ‘Only two jobs? Ay, I beat you there. Me, I’m a Holarawnd Man — know what that means?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  A wink and blissful gurgle, echoed by the crowd. ‘You listen now to wisdom, boy. “Holarawnd” means I do many things. Lots and lots. First, I do business, see? This is my own store where I take care of all bodies, truly-truly — with food! And with spirits, of course — beer, gin, you name it!’

  Applause all around. Everyon
e knows Pay Inyo as a generous and hopeless businessman who gives his poorer customers and drinking mates an endless credit line.

  ‘And for your information, I’m an herbularyo too, so I cure bodies, free them from bad spirits — those that fizzle in another way, you know.’ Wink-wink.

  A circuit of winking among the drinkers. Ah, isn’t this He-man a bad spirt too? Yes, let him fizzle back to the city.

  ‘Then when cure-less, I return their bodies to the earth, in order to free their good spirit, get me?’ Here, Pay Inyo crossed himself, and suddenly grew dead-serious. ‘My dear boy, I’m also a gravedigger — and you don’t mess with gravediggers.’ He looked He-man in the eye, oh-so-close, and Heman jumped back, as if punched.

  The crowd held their breath. What now?

  Well, Pay Inyo twirled around the young man, singing, ‘And you with your great chest and me, all ribs? No — this is a gitara, pluck each rib for a note — say, you can dance? Well, hear me sing,’ and Pay Inyo launched into a plaintive serenade, strumming his bony chest up and down, up and down, while the drinkers cheered and raised their beers to his health.

  ‘So you He-man, me Holarawnd Man. I have many jobs, boy, many jobs, truly-truly. And I can do more but not enough time to enumerate all — so I beat you, see?’ he said, throwing a double punch in the air.

  ‘Yes, yes, great man Pay Inyo — In-yo! In-yo! In-yo!’ The crowd cheered some more, stamping their feet and clunking each other’s beer bottles. ‘Another round of gulps for Pay Inyo, yeheeey!’

  Poor He-man wilted. The broad chest caved in as he stared about then backed away, muttering, ‘What pathetic provincials!’

  ‘And that, children, was the famous retreat which cemented my reputation, fixed it in history, truly-truly.’ Pay Inyo always ends his tale with a raised fist and an earnest declaration of ‘truly-ness’, his habitual bid for trust. Of course his young audience applaud, even Pilar, who remains sceptical about the embellishments in the narrative. She agrees, though, that he is indeed the Mister Holarawnd Man of Iraya — the ‘all-around man’, their Jack-of-all-trades. He can do almost anything except stand up against her mother, who now orders her to bring him a sack of duma — sweet potatoes, cassava and a bit of yam — as some kind of payment. ‘And choose the best ones, girl.’

  ‘Pronto, Mamay!’ and she twirls the machete about, ready to ‘attack’ the sweet potato farm and harvest only the best for the old man who truly-truly loves her mother. Her brother Bolodoy ducks, ay, crazy girl! Queen of mischief, queen of plots.

  Now eleven years old, Pilar has not quite outgrown the puyô that rule the top of her scalp and her disposition. Puyô, the focal point on one’s scalp, where all hair seems to converge, it’s like the eye of a hurricane. Everyone has a puyô, more obvious in babies, but for those who have two, like Pilar, ay, Dios mio — her two eyes of a hurricane signal an incorrigible personality, the old folks lament. She’s a natural handful, this girl who wears her hair like a boy’s. She flashes a peculiar smirk, as if she were proclaiming, I’ve-a-secret-but-why-should-I-tell-you. She likes the Holarawnd Man, because he loves her mother whom she loves, but next only to Carmen. No one knows this. Pilar is secretive and furiously loyal. Her gritty little heart broke only once, under the guava trees. Nothing much has changed after five years — ‘I’m your queen, always tough, don’t you forget this, and Bolodoy’s my minister. And you, Estrella, well, you can be my bald slave.’

  She heaves the sack of tubers on her back with an economy of movement known only to those who are certain of their strength.

  Chapter 23

  The kingdom is a crumbling wooden house built on an orchard of fruit trees. Balustraded steps ascend to a sagging balcony that leads to a door, which sighs when you knock, betraying the timbre of rotting wood. On the west-end of the house, the large capiz shell window shimmers. Amber light is kind. Lush, syrupy, spilling over warp and wear, hiding age in a languorous ooze. It is summer, five o’clock and so moist, even the leaves must be sweating. Unknown to Estrella, this is like her dead mother’s favourite afternoon that humidly stretches forever, perfect for a swim in the river with the devoted Pilar. Estrella is ignorant of her history, and can’t quite understand her sister’s cruelty, oh-what-a-queen-bully!

  ‘Go on, sing the Allelluia, Eya, sing you idiot —

  ‘A rocking dove

  Roosted on the sacristy

  Padre Biya saw her

  She sang Alleluia!’

  Pilar’s naughty version of the Salve Regina, which is sung by the appointed angel during the Easter dawn celebration. Angelhood is every little girl’s dream in Iraya. Ah, to be chosen as the winged darling who emerges from the kalampuso, a heart-shaped contraption made of thin, white paper and bamboo strips, which slowly opens from the top of a five-metre bamboo scaffolding. Tied to a rope around her waist, the angel is lowered from this blooming paper heart in a dramatic descent of fairy white dress, cotton wings, a crown of plastic flowers with fake pearls and the full face make-up that inspires her to feel as holy as a movie star!

  But she is an angel who must remain floating in mid-air despite the terror in her little heart that the rope might snap or the scaffolding might collapse or that she won’t be able to bear this creeping nausea, made even worse by the tight rope around her belly. The angel is afraid but the show goes on. She releases the dove of peace, which kept shitting on her hands while they were both trapped in the heart, then sings the Salve Regina.

  The highlight of the performance follows. The Mater Dolorosa passes by, a gothic plaster figure with her daggered heart, on a wooden stand adorned with plastic flowers. She is carried by the men directly under the angel who, in mid-flight, must lift the Blessed Mother’s veil of mourning with hands folded in prayer. It has to be perfectly timed, scrupulously choreographed by the faithful, this resurrection from grief on the third day.

  Pilar also dreamt of becoming an angel when she was little, but secretly. They were too poor and too busy working in the sweet potato farm. The race towards angelhood was expensive and ate up precious time. It meant winning a ‘money contest’ or, kindly put, assisting the church in its fundraising project. In this worthy task, the stage mothers of the six- to eight-year-old aspirants compete in selling the most number of tickets, in the name of their daughters. The biggest earner wins the title of ‘angel’. Ay, what she would have given to be an angel, even just once!

  But on this damp afternoon in the dreamer’s kingdom, there is no competition. Pilar has outgrown her chance for divinity. The only eligible angel is the smaller girl now tied to a rope that’s precariously slung over the branch of an ancient tree. An imposing hardwood, trunk thick and sprouting a wondrous shade of verdant green, one branch stretched like an arm holding the rope, now a pulley managed from below by the queen devil and her brother, the reluctant minister. Yes, hang the slave!

  The bastard angel is hanging from the fart-fart tree: the atut-atut.

  Earlier Eya protested against the choice of tree whose leaves, once crushed, emit the foulest scent. This very tall hardwood is out of place in an orchard of fragrant guava, jackfruit, orange, coffee and cacao. Can’t be helped, as Mamay Dulce vehemently dismisses any protest against ‘the trivial discomfort’ and the suggestion that the culprit be chopped down. What’s a bit of unpleasant smell if it gives shade in summer?

  ‘But, Manay Pilar, I can do my Alleluia from the jackfruit tree instead,’ the angel argues from the air. ‘It’s as strong and not so high up.’

  ‘No, only the best tree for angels like you.’ Ah, the queen bully delights in torture. She had generously rubbed the rope around Estrella’s stomach with the dreaded leaves, ‘I bless you with this holy fart,’ before she hoisted her up. ‘Sing, you stupid angel — go on, sing!’

  ‘I don’t think we should do this,’ Bolodoy says. Older but smaller in build and spirit than Pilar, he can’t bear to look at the little body clawing the air. ‘She’s hurting, oh, she’s hurting, I know — ’

  ‘Aw, sh
ut up. Just keep pulling. We’ll take her higher yet — pull!’

  ‘Ay, sister, sister, my tummy! My tummyyyyy!’ the angel screams. The rope is cutting into her navel, the world is spinning. ‘Take me down, take me down, arayyyyyy!’

  Five years later the dead woman’s child is still wailing. Her cry is buoyed by a sudden wind around the same yard, as if the summer funeral never ended. But under this amber light, the orchard is not at all disturbed. The trees remain detached from this afternoon torture, because there are preoccupations more urgent than heeding a cry for help. The coffee berries are brewing their flavour, the cacao seeds are putting on their luscious white coats, the jackfruit is blooming and the guavas are just as sweet, delectably pink in their insides, though they can still inspire mean lumps in the throat — because young Pilar has not forgiven the child who killed her best friend. Because no one has explained Carmen’s death. Because no one has truly buried her.

  But can we truly bury the dead, or the mean lumps in the throat? Or lost sweetness? All are threaded, beloved. So how to remember one and forget the other?

  ‘We will remember only in our hearts, but this baby must not know. Best to keep the poor dear out of it, best to keep silent, then the rest of Iraya will hush their malicious whispers,’ the baby’s grandmother made a pact with Mamay Dulce years ago. ‘And please, you will stay here and become her family. You, Dulsora Capas, will be her new mother, and when I leave this earth, my granddaughter Estrella Capili must grow up as a Capas. And this, my father’s house, and what little money I have are now yours.’ A year later the old woman died and Dulce promised to love the orphan as much as her own children. But even more, even more, Pilar has always believed. Ay, Mamay has never loved more passionately.

  ‘Brother, put me down, please, Brotheeeeeer!’ The five-year-old shrieks as the rope is tugged sharply and she’s jolted further up, her back hitting the great trunk.

  ‘I’m getting her down now, I’m getting her down,’ Bolodoy says, loosening the rope.