* * * *
Senya is crushing ice in plastic cups when we arrive. She hands us both knives so we can help. It’s a burning day, and the ice is already half melted by the time we pour condensed milk and corn kernels into it. We don’t talk much, sitting on the steps of her house, eating our frozen treats. There’s one moment when I act ridiculous, closing my eyes. I don’t hear cars or smell pollution or feel like someone’s about to snatch my phone out of my pocket—it’s another one of those times where the province feels peaceful, otherworldly, and I’m glad it’s not Manila. I’m glad the freeways don’t extend to here; I’m glad I don’t feel the need to take a selfie with the cup in my hands and give it the appropriate hashtag.
Edna sings a song in Batangenyo, which I vaguely understand as being about a river, and Senya joins in during the chorus, winding her hair into a braid over her shoulder.
Mang Okat emerges from the trees blocking our view of the path. We’re already standing to greet him when he shouts for help. He’s dragging something—someone.
I get to him first and let him drape the arm of the person he’s carrying over my shoulders. I don’t ask, just move. Senya and Edna watch as we climb up the short steps and deposit the person on Mang Okat’s narrow wooden bed. The man stirs, moans. There are open sores all down his arms and over his chest: cuts and scrapes that gleam raw, wet, and weeping. The wounds are all colors, a grisly sunburst spectrum of red-yellow-orange-purple-black, some graying at the edges.
Mang Okat picks a bottle off his workbench, full of wood chips and herbs suspended in oil. A strong smell of rum leaks when he opens it. He pours the liquid over the patient’s chest, smearing it into the wounds. The patient makes a gargling noise, inhuman-sounding.
“Tay, do you need help?” Senya asks.
Mang Okat glances up and shakes his head. His eyes linger on mine briefly, but I can’t decipher the look in them—something almost like fear. “I think you girls should go.”
It takes effort for me to walk away. I can’t tear my eyes from the sight of the man, or stop noticing the smell of his skin, warm and slick with fluid from his wounds. There are weeping sores even on the soles of his feet, and before I turn around completely, I see a black bug crawl—out of his wound, or next to it?
“Ate Macky,” Edna calls. I sprint down the steps.
* * * *
We reach the river. I lean over the bank, knees against my chest, willing myself not to retch. The thought of vomiting makes me think of the man from the previous night again. I stare at the water, watch my reflection stare back.
“Who was it?” Edna asks.
“I didn’t see,” Senya says. I turn to look at her. She sits cross-legged, fingers twiddling the grass. “I don’t think even Itay can fix that kind of curse.”
“Curse?” I ask, stomach bunching as I stand. “That was a curse? It looks like he got—I don’t know—sliced by tons of invisible knives.”
Edna and Senya look at each other, then back at me, almost pityingly.
“It’s a mambabarang,” Senya says. “I guess you wouldn’t encounter that in Manila.”
“Mambabarang? What the fuck is that?”
“They curse people,” Edna answers. I forget that I shouldn’t curse around kids, but she doesn’t seem to care. She’s pulling up little blades of grass. “They’re like . . . the opposite of Mang Okat. You can bring them money, or things they want, and they’ll curse your enemies. Or sometimes they’ll curse people just because.” I wonder why she won’t look at me as she says it.
“Witches?”
Edna shrugs. Her little face is dull, and I realize it’s not that unusual here. My ignorance is—if not annoying, puzzling. “They can be boys, too.”
“What the hell? There’s someone like that in the village and you just—haven’t they ever tried catching the person?”
“The mambabarang won’t get caught,” Senya says, still with that gentle voice. “It’s not like there’s only one. If they were found out, the village would murder them, or at least—send them away. They’re careful. They won’t let others talk.”
I think of Mang Okat’s glance. I remember that the man yesterday gave me the same look, after he’d hurled and started walking away—and heaviness sprouts in my chest. Was it him? But I already know it was.
“It’s not me,” I say.
There’s a moment of silence. Then Senya laughs, doubled over, shrill and gasping. It’s the loudest sound I’ve heard her make. Her laughter makes me feel ridiculous, but I crack a smile, because if she thinks it’s impossible, it must be.
“Of course not, Miss Macky,” she says. “You’ll use the law instead, right?”
I stare at her, mouth open, fighting the urge to slap her—I’m trying, in my own way. Her gaze levels mine. “You wouldn’t do a thing like that,” she says, back to her soft voice, like something escaping a dream. You wouldn’t dare, her eyes say, and anyway, why would you ever need to?
* * * *
Tito Benjo and I eat in the carinderia that evening, because Aling Dinday isn’t feeling well and can’t make us dinner. I push around the stewed goat on my plate, while Tito Benjo watches a basketball game on the oversaturated TV. I am about to ask if I can go home when Edna crashes into our table. The dim light shows tears streaked across her face. “Ate Macky! Governor! Itay is—Itay is—”
We run, with Tito Benjo puffing behind us. Edna stops in the goat field outside the house. I don’t need light to know that there’s blood everywhere. I smell it rising from the grass, and when I kneel down beside Manong Edgar and cradle his head, I feel it, slick between my fingers.
“Who—” I ask, but Edna is shaking her head—she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know.
“I’ll get the car,” Tito Benjo says, voice pinched. He charges off.
“Is he still alive?” Edna asks. I hold my hand over his nose, expecting the worst. He’s breathing, just barely.
“Edna!” Aling Dinday appears at the edge of the field, with Mang Okat and Senya behind her, all of them panting. When they reach us, Mang Okat kneels across me, and Senya pulls Edna into her arms. “Manong, manong, please,” Aling Dinday breathes, clutching Mang Okat’s hand. She isn’t sobbing, but her voice wobbles.
“He needs a hospital,” Mang Okat says. “This isn’t something my healing will work on.”
Aling Dinday draws in a heavy breath, just as Tito Benjo’s car comes up the road. He brings it right up to the fence, then hurries over. Carefully, he and Mang Okat lift Manong Edgar to the car. Aling Dinday wipes her eyes and climbs in after them.
“You stay and watch Edna,” Tito Benjo says. I nod, hands still wet with blood, shaking, shaken.
* * * *
I try to sleep, with Edna curled up beside me, tears streaming out of her eyes while she half dozes.
Why Manong Edgar? Someone drunk? High? Someone with revenge on his mind?
You don’t understand. It’s different here. We just get used to it.
For no reason? I pull my blanket up to my chin and let my heart drum me to sleep.
* * * *
“Ate Macky,” Edna whispers. I jerk upright. It’s still dark outside. The moon hovers outside our window, bloated, dull silver.
“What is it?”
“Come on.” Edna stands from where she was crouched next to my bed. “We’ve got to hurry.” She starts out the door.
I trip out of bed, pull on my slippers, and follow her. She walks down the path, steady and sure, and crosses the goat fields into a thicket of trees—the forest outside our farm. I’m afraid I’ll lose her in the darkness, so I walk faster, until I’m in step with her. After minutes of nothing, I see a dim fire blazing ahead—the glow of several candles, beneath a balete tree with dead, drooping branches. I blink to focus. Someone is crouched before the candle flame, wearing a sky blue skirt, hair hanging wild over her shoulders.
She sees us and holds a finger to her lips as we come closer. Her eyes are hazy, half-lidded. Edna pulls me
to sit down beside her.
Senya holds out her hand. There are fat beetles on it, the same kind I’d seen in her house. I am not afraid of bugs, but the revulsion inside me is so strong that I gag. Her finger skims their shells, and she makes a clucking sound in the back of her throat. Then she drops them onto her lap, and they rove around in lazy circles. She withdraws something from her shirt pocket—it’s a needle, with white thread running through it, ghostly in the moonlight.
She picks up a bug and pierces it with the thread. I dig my fingers into my palm. She pierces the bug, again and again. There is no sound, but with each movement of Senya’s stabbing hand I feel like covering my ears, like there’s screaming in my skull. Screaming, laughter, crying, screeching. She does this to the two other bugs, and then sets them down on the floor. Instead of curling up or twitching to death, the bugs appear to be unharmed. They begin moving in a line, pale thread strung between their black bodies, and that’s when I notice the cloth doll lying next to the candles.
The bugs burrow their way into it. Senya watches, hands folded in her lap. We all watch. The doll flops back and forth as the bugs tear their way through it. Then, from the same holes they bore in, the bugs burrow their way out. Senya whispers to them—or to us, or to the candle flame?—and their black shapes move into the darkness, through blades of grass, thread trailing behind them. The sounds in my head slowly die away.
Senya sighs. It’s the first human sound I’ve heard in what feels like forever. She looks drained, the bags under her eyes alarming, her mouth drawn into a deep-set curve. Edna reaches out her hand toward Senya, and Senya takes it. After a moment, Edna reaches out a hand to me, and I reach out for Senya’s, closing the circle. Her fingers are slim and cool in my grasp.
We stay like that, waiting in the dark, while the candle burns and the village twists and seethes around us. It feels like a long time before the screaming starts, but it could have been minutes. In a village this small, every sound is amplified.
There are tears running down Edna’s face, but she just squeezes my hand tighter, and the fury in her eyes is matched only by the serenity of Senya’s smile.
I look down at my feet. I imagine the skin along my veins cracking apart, gushing with blood; dark beetles crawling out, making their way up my shins, my legs, eating their way into my belly. Pouring out of me, trailing my insides with them, slick with blood. I think of the man holding his knife toward Senya. I think of Manong Edgar in the goat field, singing to himself, waving at me. I curl my toes and hold their hands, and we wait until the screams stop; we wait until we are satisfied.
* * * *
My shirt is crusty when I wake up, from Edna’s tears and snot. She’s rolled away from me and is facing the opposite wall. I can’t remember when we came back. I can’t remember if we ever left.
I fumble for my phone. No messages. I hold it outside the window, trying to get a signal, and after a few minutes, there’s a ping: Tell Edna Mang Edgar will make it. Tks.
They come home two days later, after the village has found and buried the drunken ass that did it. Manong Edgar’s head is heavily bandaged, but his laughter when he sees Edna, despite being weaker, is full of warmth.
* * * *
I stop by Mang Okat’s house my last day in town. Edna’s sulking, but I’ve promised to make it up to her by bringing a souvenir from Manila next time. Mang Okat and Senya are on the steps, shelling boiled peanuts.
“I’m heading back to Manila tonight. Manong, thank you again for your help the other day.”
“No more headaches?”
“None. No patients today?”
Mang Okat shakes his head slightly, then stands. “That’s right—I have something for you!” He enters his house and rummages around the bottles on his bench.
Senya holds out a handful of shelled peanuts.
“No, thank you,” I say.
“Ready for your test?”
“Sort of. I’ll feel better when I take it. At least it will be over.”
She laughs as Mang Okat emerges and hands me a tiny oil-filled bottle. “Just rub a bit of this on your head when it hurts,” he says.
“Thank you, Manong.” I fumble through my pocket. He waves me away.
“Just take it,” Senya says—to me this time. She stands, puts her bowl of peanuts away, and gives me a quick, awkward hug. “Good luck.”
I am halfway down the road when I turn back to face them, bottle clutched in my hand.
Senya gives me a small smile and a wave. I wave back. Something crawls up the side of my neck, perching behind my ear. I pinch it between my fingers, hold it away, let it drop to the ground. I see, briefly, the black thread trailing from its body, before it scuttles off to safety.
LITTLE WIDOW
MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY
I was fourteen and at a sleepover when the cult drank poison. The sleepover mom turned on the TV and said, “Oh my lord, Mary, would you look at this? It’s the feds is what, and a bomb, right out there where you come from.”
But it wasn’t the feds, and it wasn’t a bomb. It was us. We were destined to die. I watched it burn, and listened to the news call us a cult, which was not what we called ourselves. We called ourselves Heaven’s Avengers. I watched it for a while, and then I threw up hamburger casserole.
Miracle didn’t have a stoplight. Miracle didn’t have a grocery store. Miracle didn’t typically attract anything but traffic going the dirty way to some other place. We were on the road to California, and people sorrowing in other states found their way to Disneyland through us. Miracle had no marvels. It was named after a thing that’d happened back in 1913. People got lost—a whole troupe of the religiously devout on a pilgrimage—and then they got found. They came up out of a lake bottom and walked on the water, briefly, before they disappeared again. A cult got started around that notion, and a hundred years later, on the anniversary of the water walk, my cult killed itself.
Now it was trailers and scraggly dogs, and everyone who hadn’t been part of the dead cult was an ex-con turned to factory work. An hour away, we had a sugar factory and you could get a company bus. Most of our town worked there, bleaching brown to white.
I watched the compound burning on the news. My mom and dad were in there, and everyone else too, all sleeping on the floor. Nobody’d noticed that we were having problems, or maybe people had—the police had visited us and done a couple of circles with their sirens on, but another cult had lately gunned down half the police force in a little town in Texas. The locals let us be.
We were hippies only in theory. In reality, we were working on an armed takeover of heaven. The Preacher thought if we meditated white knives into our minds, we’d hit heaven as a unified army, slashing. We wanted heaven for ourselves. We didn’t see the point of suffering. The plan was to rise up, and so the Preacher put poison in the pop.
A lot of the kids in the town had been born in the cult, and when it committed suicide, there was an epidemic of orphans. The little ones got sent out to the rest of the state, but some of us stayed. We were old enough to be okay. The leftover kids milled around Miracle, grieving and weird, not fitting in. The sleepover had been at the house of a friend who wasn’t really, and I wasn’t right in the world, not with my long dresses and my uncut hair.
I was married already, but no one except my fellow orphans knew that. I’d been married to the Preacher since I was seven. I was the Littlest Wife, and that was a special role. I brewed tea, and balanced crystals in the palms of my hands, while the rest of the wives did other things. There were fifty of us. All but three were dead now, and we were only alive because we were too young to commit to being killed. Somewhere in the mind of the Preacher, there was a notion of legal.
Our life in Heaven’s Avengers was not like some people thought it was. People had ideas about us, that we’d grown up in a sex cult. It was the reverse, except for the Preacher and his army of wives. Most of those were not having intercourse with him. They were just a battalion. The Pre
acher preached. Once a year, each wife, the of-age wives, spent a night with him, and got a baby or didn’t. We were trying to grow Heaven’s Avengers. There were only a hundred of us total, though we had some international followers who came to us through our website, and participated long-distance in preaching. So, I was married to him, but I was still a virgin. I was a wedded warrior. There were long traditions of wedded warriors, which most people didn’t know about. Armies of women, all married to a chieftain. This is the kind of thing you knew about if you were from Heaven’s Avengers.
Back then, I was called Mary out in the world, and the other two were called Rebekah and Ruth, but all three of us were “Sister” on the compound. We knew better than to stay Sister. When everyone died, we chose emergency new names. We looked at a magazine of celebrities and picked by dress color. I chose Natalie, and the other two Sisters, who were both sixteen, chose Reese and Scarlett. Then Reese took out a pair of scissors, cut off my hair, and hacked my dress up from the ground to my knees. She snipped her own hair so short, she could pass for a boy. Scarlett tore her hem into a miniskirt, and chopped her hair into a bob. We were all crying but we looked better.
We got taken in by the Stuarts, and they let us have their old teenagers’ bedrooms. The Stuarts had lost two sons in Afghanistan. They didn’t care that we were cult kids. There was room in the house for us, and they fed us cereal and scrambled eggs and didn’t ask us to go to church.
Mrs. Stuart was a faded-out redhead with white roots, a tight jaw, and a nose that’d been broken four times while bull riding. She chewed tobacco and tended cattle. Mr. Stuart had a motorcycle on the weekends, but during the week, he worked at the factory. They left us alone. We didn’t mind. We wanted to be alone. The three of us tried to figure out school. We could read, at least. We were lucky. The littler ones couldn’t. No one had taught them. Things had gotten too intense, what with the coming of the War, and schooling had slid.
We could fight with our minds, and that did no one any good in high school. Now we didn’t think about white light, nor about knives. We tried not to think about how maybe everyone we knew was warring in heaven now, but Reese sometimes looked up and cried at the sky. She missed her boyfriend, who’d turned eighteen just before the exit. He was a crack shot, and could do a backflip, but I’d never liked him. He hit me in the face once for stealing a piece of gum.
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