The hum in the back of my head builds to a dull roar.
I AM DREAMING, and dreaming proper, of my mother’s house in Bicol, a small, bamboo-and-hemp structure that the ma’ams in Manila call a ‘shanty’ – a word I never knew before coming to the city. Shadows from the malunggay trees dapple our house’s nipa roof, and the scent of the white sampaguita blossoms, by the door, is so strong that I almost don’t smell the dead god arrive.
Perhaps I came on too strongly, earlier, says the dead god. Today it wears a skin bristling with black feathers, thin panels on the side swinging open with each movement, to reveal white bones beneath. I keep forgetting how young you are.
“I’m not that young.” When I lived here, Nanay’s house and the land around it were full of running, tumbling children. But in the dream, the house is silent. The curtain over the doorway swings open in the thick, salty breeze, revealing darkness inside. “Did you go back for her funeral?” I ask the dead god. As soon as the words leave my mouth, I feel stupid; who knows if or how gods travel?
The dead god sighs. I stayed by her side, until your family cremated her, and scattered her ashes in the sea. Then I came to find you.
A face flashes in the window, and for a moment, I see my mother running her palms over the latticed screen, checking for dirt. The dead god’s mark glimmers like white fire in the sunlight, a web of discoloration and scarring across her face. She vanishes before I can call out to her.
I loved her, the dead god says quietly. Very much.
“She loved you, too,” I say. The sea wind whips around us, ruffling the dead god’s feathers and my own short black hair. “She used to tell us stories about you all the time.” I don’t say that these stories, like those of all of the old gods, are banned in the Calderone household, in favor of Catholic masses and Ma’am Loretta’s saints.
The dead god laughs, a dry sound like marbles rattling. Don’t I know. I’ve been looking after your family since its inception, long before the milk-skinned Spanish washed up on your shores, with weapons in their mouths and greed in their hearts. It turns its head to me, empty eye sockets staring through me, to a different time and place. Your mother was special to me, though. She was my favorite, so fierce, so strong. She made me promise to take her youngest daughter as her heir when she passed on, in honor of her years in my service, and to grant you a special boon when you make your pact with me.
I do not want to think of my mother dead and lying in ashes at the bottom of the sea, so I wipe my eyes and ask the god, “What kind of boon are you offering me po?”
The dead god grins, revealing a beak full of thick, blunt teeth. I would give you the gift of transformation. Pledge yourself to me and I will teach you to wing about the night, unhampered by human concerns. I will show you the secret banana groves where your mother hid her legs, deep in dreamland and Bicol’s jungles.
My right hand tingles. I shield it from the dead god’s sight with my good hand, banishing the images the god’s words conjure up. A perfect, straight limb. No more stares. No more hiding. “That’s not what I meant.”
Well, then. The dead god shrugs. I offer you knowledge of charms and spells, enchantments that will guarantee your household safety, recipes to keep the curses of other aswang away. I can teach you to make a man love you, and stay by your side for the rest of your days. How rare is that?
“No, you promised me something special,” I say. I pretend not to notice my knees shaking, so that the dead god will not notice either. I pretend not to think of Rodante, with his sharp green eyes and sweet smile. “In memory of my nanay. She was your charge for most of her life, and you would teach me all these things if I pledged myself to you, anyway. Do not try to cheat me po.”
The dead god clicks its beak. It sounds pleased. All right, clever child. You really are like your mother. I can offer you a special gift: one death, or one life, before you take on my powers. No one will ever know it was you, and you may cast the blame or credit on anyone you choose.
I shiver. What a great and terrible gift. Before I think it through, the words fall from my mouth: “Can you bring my mother back?”
The dead god is silent for too long. You would not recognize her if I did, it says finally. I would have to gather her ashes from the sea, and the ocean has already claimed most of her essence. Even so, I may only keep one living disciple. She already designated you, at her passing.
“So you can’t,” I say. “Or you won’t.”
To bring her back, you would have to die. And I refuse to trade our living daughter, to bring back only half of the disciple I loved most.
The love and sorrow in the dead god’s hollow voice makes me flinch. “You’re no father to me,” I snarl. “I don’t need your gifts. You’d best leave. Don’t bother coming back.”
The dead god sighs. I’ll see you tomorrow night, it says, and vanishes, leaving me alone with the whispering trees and my abandoned childhood home. This time, it doesn’t take the sampaguita scent with it.
IN THE NEXT weeks, my mornings are filled with wedding preparations: running to and from the barong-makers’ with measurements from the groom’s party; rushing glasses of ice water to the ma’ams from America, who whine and argue over flower arrangements; and pushing through the tiangge to check on the arrhae’s progress and on the green-eyed jeweler’s son.
I spend the late afternoons with Rodante, sneaking out on the pretext of errands, and meeting him on the walk-up roof above jeweler’s alley, to share cigarettes and snacks. We talk about our families and homes, far, far from Manila. He is from Capiz, a province south of mine. Once, I ask him about family gods.
“We have one, I think,” he says. “Though I’ve never really believed in gods.”
Unusual, I think, in this country full of Catholics and witches. “Not even in spirits?” I ask, tapping our shared cigarette against my finger, and watching the ash flit down onto the concrete, away from the cigarette’s glowing, orange tip.
“No, though my dad said he saw a kapre once. This was back when he was looking for a place to build our home.” Rodante runs his fingers through my hair, and I lean into his touch. “The kapre was up in a tree, watching him wander through a banana grove. He warned my dad that the grove was sacred, and that if he chopped down any of the trees there, the kapre would curse him.”
“So, did he? The kapre, I mean.”
Rodante laughs and shrugs. “Who knows? If my dad really saw him, maybe he did. He ended up building our house in the banana grove anyway.” He takes the cigarette from me and draws in a deep breath, exhaling a thin trail of smoke. “Maybe that’s why my leg’s the way it is.”
“Does it hurt?” I ask, turning to look at his leg.
On the way, he catches my chin and kisses me. His mouth is bitter with tobacco, and sweet from the lychees we’d been eating earlier. Long strands of his hair brush against my bare shoulders, cool and fluid over my sticky skin.
I want to kiss him until we both melt in the summer heat, dissolving into each other in a tangle of limbs and beating hearts. But I’ve learned from my sister, and from the ma’ams’ cold hostility. In our meetings, I never let him touch me for too long, always breaking away from his kisses, before the embers under my skin grow to a full-fanned flame. Unlike Silvia, I have no rich sir to marry; I cannot afford to have a baby and risk being sent away.
But his breath is like sweet spice, and I have never kissed a boy before, especially not one who is so like me. I have yet to ask him if he also hears the strange hum in his skull when we meet, if the dark circles beneath his bright green eyes are products of the same night terrors I’ve had all my life. His mouth moves against me, and I can feel his hands around my waist, sliding up the hem of my shirt.
“I should go,” I mumble, pushing him away. My face burns, and I’ve dropped the cigarette. I stamp it out, avoiding eye contact.
“Okay.” Rodante doesn’t sound disappointed; rather, his tone is shy. “I’m sorry if – I’m sorry about pushing you too
hard, if you aren’t ready yet.”
I blush, for shame. I know I am not ready as he means it, but I do enjoy his kisses. “Will you walk me home?”
“I’m sorry. My mother doesn’t like me going out after sunset. It’s hard for me to get around, and she’s afraid I’ll be taken advantage of, with this leg.” He must see my face fall, because he reaches into his pocket and produces a small, black pouch. “But I have something for you, Tin. Here, open it.”
Our fingers touch as he hands it to me, and I open it to find a small, glass-faced locket, on a golden chain. I gasp. It’s worth more money than I’ve ever had, far too expensive for someone like me. “No, Rod, I can’t –”
He kisses my cheek gently, almost chastely. “Please, Tin? Let me help you put it on.”
Rodante limps behind me, and draws the chain over my head. The links are so fine that they slide over my skin, like a thread of woven silk. After he closes the clasp, he brushes my hair away from the necklace. “I hope you like it.”
“I do.” The setting sun catches in the glass, illuminating the small white flower trapped inside. “It’s beautiful,” I murmur. “But are you sure it’s okay to give this to me?”
“I designed it.” He smiles, the corners of his mouth crooked. “It’s almost like you’re keeping a piece of me, wherever you go. Hopefully it’ll keep you safer than I can.”
I kiss him once more before I leave, pressing our lips together and then darting away, for fear that if I stay any longer, I will never be able to leave.
Back home in the maids’ quarters, the other girls gather round to admire the necklace and tease me about my new suitor. “Be careful,” says Vicky, mussing my hair. “You’ll be the next to be married, at this rate!”
My sister, now swollen with the child growing inside her, doesn’t seem jealous of all the attention I’m getting. Instead, she watches beatifically, the entire room gently lit with her presence. Lacing my fingers with hers, I cannot remember a time in the recent past when I have been happier. The hole torn in my heart by Nanay’s death seems smaller, with each passing moment and each beat of my sister’s pulse against mine.
I WAKE TO the Calderone house on fire. Even in the maids’ quarters, the air crackles with flames, searing my skin and catching at my blanket like groping fingers. I shout and try to beat the flames on my bed out, but it’s a lost cause. No one else is in sight.
Snatching the only intact blanket from Jene’s bed, I wrap it tightly around me and barrel toward the exit, hoping and praying to God, to the dead god, to whoever is listening. The flames snarl, as I crash through the doorway, hitting the dirt so hard I forget how to breathe. The roof caves in behind me.
The maids and ma’ams are clustered together on the sidewalk, the closest I’ve ever seen them, in my year and a half of service to the Calderones. Ma’am Loretta hunches over the asphalt, a blanket over her shoulders, rocking silently back and forth, as her childhood home burns.
Over it all is the sound of my sister screaming. But she is nowhere to be seen. Neither is Sir Carlos, her fiancé.
“Where’s Silvia?” I shout, recovering enough to draw in a raspy breath. No one seems to hear me at first, but then I see Vicky point at the house. She’s still inside, I realize with horror. My pregnant sister, trapped inside a burning, collapsing house.
The dissonant hum in my head is so strong, I almost can’t find the strength to walk. But I fight through it, just as I fight through the splintering doorway and follow Silvia’s screams, through the once-great halls.
I find her on the floor of Sir Carlos’s bathroom, crumpled on the floor like a dark-winged bird, lying in a growing pool of blood. Sir Carlos is wrestling with her, and for a moment, I believe he is trying to kill her. Then I hear him shouting, “Stop! Silvia, stop! Please!” and see the panicked tears streaming down his face. My sister is trying to tear her hair out, gripping great fists of it and banging her head against the tile. Sir Carlos catches sight of me and cries, “Help me get her out! Please!”
I rush to her side, and she almost swings her skull into me. I grab her head, whispering assurances into her ear through her moans and screams, and help Sir Carlos hoist her to her feet. That’s when I realize that her nightgown is soaked in blood from the waist down, and she’s sobbing, over and over, “My baby, my baby, my baby.”
Outside the house, my sister collapses in the grass by the gate, Sir Carlos weeping at her side.
YOU LITTLE FOOL, snarls the dead god. It crouches on my chest, its spidery limbs stabbing down on either side of my face, as I lie in a state of bangungot, paralyzed and helpless. Black flames blaze in its empty eye sockets. That fire was no accident, and that was not a normal miscarriage. A rogue aswang is preying on you.
“An aswang?” I ask, bewildered. “Like Nanay and me?”
Worse. The dead god presses a hand to my forehead, and an image of a hideous, bat-winged creature silhouettes itself against my mind. I picture it dragging its legless torso toward the house, pulling itself up to the window of the maids’ quarters, unfurling its proboscis-like tongue… I wrench my head away, as the dead god says, A manananggal, judging from the wounds on your sister. They only grow like that deep in the jungles of Capiz.
“Someone targeted her?” I would cover my face if I could, the dead god’s visage is so terrible, but I am frozen, the breath crushed out of me by the god’s unforgiving weight. “But why? She’s just –”
She is a Reyes girl, from my line. I am not the only god in the region. And Manila is an amalgamation of many peoples, from many regions. For the first time, the dead god sounds contemptuous. Perhaps you fancy yourself special, Christina Maria Reyes. But there are plenty of other witch-families that would love to stamp you – and me, with you – out completely, and they are much more powerful than an uninitiated girl-child and a stray god without a disciple. It breathes its fetid odor into my face. Maybe I have been too lax on you, and have not emphasized the danger your family is in. The danger that you brought into this house!
“What are you talking about?”
It snaps the necklace from my neck. Even more than the pain of the breaking chain is the stab of pain through my heart, the fear and betrayal. That necklace is mine and mine alone, the only thing that really belongs to me.
The god holds the locket before my face, the broken chain tangled in its fingers. Haven’t you figured it out yet, little girl?
The dead god hurls the locket against the wall, where it shatters. Suddenly I am looking into a familiar pair of tired green eyes, and Rodante’s voice floods my head:
“The kapre was up in a tree, watching him wander through a banana grove. He warned my dad that the grove was sacred, and that if he chopped down any of the trees there, the kapre would curse him.”
An echo of the dead god’s voice from many nights ago: I will show you the secret banana groves where your mother hid her legs, deep in dreamland and Bicol’s jungles.
“I’m sorry,” says Rodante’s shadow, up on the rooftop. My mouth burns, with the remembered taste of tobacco and overripe fruit. “My mother doesn’t like me going out after sunset.”
I will teach you to wing about the night, unhampered by human concerns, whispers the dead god. How rare is that?
An image of Rodante limping away, that first day in the jewelry shop, the scars on his skin now aflame with power: “Maybe that’s why my leg’s the way it is.”
By the time the dead god releases its grip, there are tears streaming down my face. I collapse, gasping for air, the remnants of the bangungot’s paralysis leaking from me.
Think about it, the dead god says coldly. It vanishes, leaving me to face the rest of the night terrors on my own.
“THE WEDDING IS still on?” demands Ma’am Chitti. “Are you serious, Mama?”
Ma’am Loretta doesn’t even look at her. Her gaze is trained on her son, Sir Carlos, who sits next to my sister on the couch. Their hands are entwined, and he’s stroking her arm. My sister is pale, dazed; they�
��ve put her on Ma’am Margarita’s Valium, to dull the shock of losing the baby.
The entire family has taken refuge at Ma’am Loretta’s brother’s house, a few streets down from the old Calderone home. It’s also much smaller than Ma’am Loretta’s house, and the close quarters mean that tensions are higher than ever.
I stand along the wall with the rest of the maids, watching the ma’ams battle and bicker. The shelves of saints, as many here as in Ma’am Loretta’s former room, stare down at us with dead, wooden eyes.
“Carlos.” The man startles at his mother’s voice. “Do you still want to marry Silvia?”
He nods silently, clutching my sister close to him. The two of them are still shaking, trembling together like a pair of rabbits.
“But there’s no baby!” protests Ma’am Margarita. “What’s the use of a marriage –”
Ma’am Loretta slaps her across the face. The sound echoes across the room, followed by shocked silence.
Tears begin to leak from my sister’s dull eyes. Silvia wanted this baby more than anything, I realize. She wanted it because it was his, because she loves him. And because he loves her. And Ma’am Loretta knows that.
Ma’am Loretta snaps her fingers and looks straight at me. “Tin, come here.” I detach myself from the wall, ignoring the American ma’ams. “Make sure you retrieve the arrhae tomorrow, as planned. We must have it for a proper Calderone wedding.”
“Yes, Ma’am Loretta,” I murmur, bobbing my head and excusing myself from the room.
As the matriarch’s daughters begin to scream at each other, I slip into Ma’am Margarita’s room for just a moment. Glancing over my shoulder, I steal one of her Valiums from the bottle atop her nightstand, hiding it in my blouse pocket. A dark, ugly rage burns in my heart. If things are to go as I’ve planned, I’ll need all the sleep I can get tonight.
“I’M SORRY,” I tell the dead god, as soon as it appears in my dreams that night. “I want to make this right.” I glance down. “Between us, and for my sister.”
Philippine Speculative Fiction, Volume 10 Page 2