by Anthology
My mother. My stomach turns.
“Tin,” calls Ma’am Loretta, her voice muffled through her bedroom door, adjunct to the kitchen. “Tin, I need you here right now!”
“I’ll be right there po,” I shout from the kitchen. Hurriedly balancing the glass of water and its coaster on a tray, I ferry it to Ma’am Margarita in the living room, stepping carefully over the train of my sister’s dress. Ma’am Margarita takes it without a word, and I dash back to Ma’am Loretta’s room. Tucking the tray under my arm, I knock on her door. “Ma’am?”
“Come in, Tin.”
Ma’am Loretta, matriarch of the Calderones, lies on her bed in near-darkness. All of the curtains are drawn; only a single clip reading lamp lights her face. The shelves lining her room are covered in wooden carvings of saints, each adorned with wreaths of dried, dead sampaguitas. The air is perfumed with their stench.
I do not know how old Ma’am Loretta is, but if my own grandmother was still alive—if she’d had a normal life, without the interference and patronage of the dead god—I think she would be almost as old as Ma’am Loretta.
Ma’am Loretta beckons me over. “I have a special task for you, Tin. I need you to go to the jeweler’s for me.” Her voice is low, as she hands me a small wooden box. I cradle it in the crook of my right arm, flipping the latch open with my left hand. My breath catches in my throat when I see what’s inside.
The Calderone arrhae lies on a pillow of blue velvet, a ring of thirteen gold-dipped coins, strung together like a crown. I’ve never seen this ancient family treasure, but I’ve heard of it: four-peso coins engraved in Spanish lettering, kept away from outsiders’ eyes, passed down and used in every Calderone wedding since the first, in the 1800s.
“The color’s gotten tarnished, see?” She lifts the arrhae and shows me a series of dark spots on the underside of the coins. “Go to Manila Jeweler’s, above the tiangge, and get it re-dipped. It needs to look good for my son’s wedding.” She lets the arrhae fall back onto the pillow. “Salma’s my suki there; tell her to give you a good price in my name.”
I can’t believe she wants me, of all people, to hold onto the Calderone arrhae. Me, with only one strong, healthy hand to hold. But I do not mention this. “Yes, Ma’am Loretta.”
She presses an envelope into my hand; inside is a thin, crisp stack of hundred-peso bills. I swallow hard and look into her eyes. Age clouds their edges milky blue, but at their core, they are mahogany-hard.
“I trust you, Tin,” Ma’am Loretta tells me. “More than I trust anyone else in this house. Don’t break that trust.”
“I won’t po,” I say.
I can’t escape from the room fast enough.
***
A ten-minute jeepney ride becomes thirty with traffic, but I make it to Greenhills without incident. Pushing my way through the tiangge, with the arrhae box tucked in a pouch beneath my blouse, is harder. The market writhes with people, flooding in and out of makeshift booths, pushing past the vendors shouting, “Ma’am! Bags! Wallets!”
My sister hates this place, but I adore it. There is a lovely anonymity among the crush of humanity in the tiangge; people are pressed too close to care about small things like a withered arm or a damaged face, anything but: “T-shirts, 300, Ma’am! Hairclips, 25 pesos, Ma’am!”
Climbing the steps to the jewelers’ alley, I let the security guard check my purse. He doesn’t think to check the pouch around my neck. They never do. The jewelers’ alley sprawls before me in a sea of glass cases and glittering stones, almost all of which are real. You could drown in opulence here.
“Manila Jeweler’s?” I ask the security guard. He points me toward a stall in the corner, with a big, plastic banner reading: sale. It seems largely abandoned, but a single figure is tucked at a desk, behind the large display counter. At first, I think that person is a girl, but then I realize he’s a boy my own age, with very long black hair. Most of that hair is tied in back in a ponytail, falling well beyond his waist.
I clear my throat. “Salma?”
He glances up at me through stray strands of dark hair, and I catch sight of a pair of eyes, the color of new bamboo. Oh.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he says. “Salma is my mother. How can I help you?”
“I was told to give something to Salma,” I tell him. There’s a strange, high pressure in the back of my head, very similar to the shrill sound I hear during bangungot. I feel stupid, and I have an irrational urge to hide my arm from him, even though he’s already seen it. “My ma’am is her suki. My ma’am says she’ll give her a good price, and I don’t want to be cheated.”
He smiles. “What’s your ma’am’s name po?”
“Ma’am Loretta Calderone.”
The boy whistles. For the first time, I notice he’s holding a pencil, and the papers in front of him are covered in sketched jewelry designs. “Oh, yes, I know her. Everyone up here knows Ma’am Calderone. What work does she need done?”
With hands that have suddenly grown clumsy, I fumble for the pouch and pull it from my shirt. I am stupidly conscious of the droplets of sweat that splatter from the bag onto the countertop. When the boy sees me having trouble with the drawstring, he reaches for the pouch. “Here, let me—”
“I’ve got it,” I say, pinning the edge of the pouch down with my right elbow, and using my left hand to pull the drawstring free. I pop open the box so he can see the arrhae, keeping it close to my body in case he tries to grab it from me. “Ma’am Calderone needs this dipped in gold for her son’s wedding.”
“May I see?”
Reluctantly, I let him take the arrhae. He examines it in the light, peering closely at the tarnished metal. “We’d usually charge 1,000 pesos for this, minimum. But for Ma’am Calderone, 850.”
“800,” I reply shortly.
“You would beggar us, Ma’am!” he protests, but there’s a hint of a laugh in his voice. It’s a nice laugh. “850 pesos for Ma’am Calderone.” He pauses. “But 800 pesos for you, if you tell me your name.”
“Done.” I slap the money down on the counter, before he can change his mind. A name given is surely worth 50 pesos. “I’m Tin.”
He grins again. “Rodante,” he introduces himself.
Instead of shaking his hand, I make him write a receipt to prove that Manila Jeweler’s is now in possession of the Calderone arrhae, and has agreed to dip it in gold—“14k? 24k? Yellow, or white?”—for 800 pesos. Rodante folds the arrhae and places it carefully back into its box. “I’ll take very good care of this for you,” he says, when he does shake my hand at the end of the transaction. His green eyes are serious. “I promise, Tin.”
“If you don’t, I’ll find you,” I threaten. “Worse, Ma’am Calderone will find you.”
He laughs again, as he lifts himself out of his seat and walks toward the back of the shop. That’s when I see that he’s limping. Rodante’s right leg is a tangled, rippled mass of scars. Just like my arm.
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’am 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 o
r 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.”
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“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.