When the Elephants Dance

by Tess Uriza Holthe

  “Domingo, I was worried that I would not return in time to help you. How did you manage to get here?” I ask.

  Domingo’s face softens slightly. “You were a great help, Isabelle. I managed to stumble forward, hiding and resting from tree to cemetery to banana grove, until I caught up with an old man who was in possession of a wagon. He was carrying the bodies of his family, pulled forward by a skeleton of a mare. I asked him if I could ride along with him, but I don’t think he even heard me. His face was a mask of shock. So I simply climbed on and lay with the bodies of his wife and sons, praying that no soldiers would see us and check. If not for you and that old man, I might have died.”

  Domingo stands abruptly. “But I have rested enough. I will go in search of my son and Alejandro.”

  It is only then that I realize my brother and Domingo’s son are not with us. Nor is Papa or Roman. “Where are they, Ma? Where is Papa?”

  No one answers.

  Mama struggles, then looks at me painfully. “Your father went for food but did not return. Your brother and Roman went in search of the two of you but did not return. We think Taba snuck out with them. That was this morning. I knew I should not have let them go. Mang Pedro, have you had any more dreams of where they might be?”

  Mang Pedro sighs deeply but shakes his head. “My visions are weak now. Not like before when I was younger. They come only when they wish, and very cloudy. Not at all like before. I have dreamt nothing of the boys. Though I have opened my mind all day.”

  “I should not have let them leave,” Mama says.

  “It is not your fault, Aling Louisa.” Domingo glares at Mang Selso. “The men should have been the ones who volunteered to go, instead of the children. They are at fault.”

  Mang Selso’s wife pinches him to keep him from saying anything. Feliciano watches my mother. He turns to Domingo. “I know of two Japanese encampments nearby.”

  “I will find them on my own, without the help of a traitor.”

  “Domingo—” Ate Lorna clutches his arm. “Perhaps we should listen. After all, he saved Isabelle. Perhaps he has had a change of heart. Perhaps he no longer sides with the Japanese.”

  Domingo scoffs at her words. “Does a devil lose his horns?”

  Ate Lorna looks at Feliciano pleadingly. “Am I right? Have you had a change of heart, Feliciano? Have you broken your ties with the Japanese?”

  Feliciano is quiet, I think his eyes water, but he looks away, so I cannot tell. “I no longer side with them. When I saw what they did to the women, to Isabelle.”

  I shudder at the memory and clutch the comb Aling Anna gave me until my knuckles hurt.

  Domingo shouts, “Do you forget the others he has pointed a finger to and turned over to the Japanese? His masters.” He paces the floor; he looks ready to fight. He points at Feliciano. “Isabelle is the only reason you are still alive, boy.”

  “I don’t need her protection,” Feliciano says with a sneer.

  “Enough!” Ate Lorna cries.

  Feliciano looks at my mother. “I will go to the encampments, to see if I can find them.”

  Domingo laughs in a frightful way. “You are not going anywhere. I know your tricks. You think I would let you bring the Japanese back here?”

  “Come with me then, unless you are frightened,” Feliciano challenges.

  “Maybe you will just tell me where the encampments are right now.” Domingo stands swiftly and pulls Feliciano up by the collar.

  The others shout for them to stop. Feliciano pulls out a pistol and brings it to Domingo’s head. “Or maybe I shoot you now, and I find them on my own.”

  “Stop it! Look what they have done to us.” Ate Lorna falls to the ground, hysterical. “We are ready to kill one another at the slightest insult.”

  My mother walks in between the two of them and puts her hand in front of Feliciano’s gun. She speaks softly. “Please, we will need you both in order for us to survive. Let us wait another hour. We have had such bad luck with sending people to find others. Though my heart screams for Alejandro, we need your strength. We cannot afford to lose you both. You two are the strongest. We may need you to search for food. We can barely walk. Let us wait. Rest, Domingo, you have been through much. If they do not return, perhaps you should both go in search of the children.”

  They shove each other away and walk to opposite corners.

  My brother Roderick asks in a small voice, “Have the Japanese killed Papa?”

  All the talk has frightened him. I call him over to sit near me. He crouches beside me and places his hands between his knees as I rub his back.

  “Hoy, Roderick.” Mang Selso lifts a chin to my brother. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Ghosts?” Roderick asks skeptically; still, he scoots his back closer to me.

  Domingo sits tensely beside Ate Lorna. He does not like her fussing over him. He will not allow her to brush his hair or clean his face with a towel. She has just bandaged his wounds. His skin looks gray, and I heard him whispering to her about going to meet his group after he finds Alejandro and Taba; but Ate Lorna would hear none of it.

  “Well, Roderick? Do you believe in ghosts or not?” Mang Selso asks.

  “I don’t know.” Roderick shrugs.

  “What if I paid you five centimos?” Mang Selso takes out five coins and they clink in his hand. “See here? What if I paid you this to visit the house of a certain Mang Bidding in Aklan? Would you go?”

  The province of Aklan runs rampant with stories of witches. Asuwángs, they are called, beings that sleep in the day standing up and at night come alive, grow wings, and detach from their lower bodies in search of unsuspecting blood donors.

  “Selso, ha, huwág mong itakotin ang mga batà,” Mama chides him gently. Do not scare the children. But I know she is thankful for the distraction.

  Roderick takes no time in considering the question. Immediately he shakes his head earnestly. “Hindì Pò, duwág ako, hindì katulad ni Ate. Hindì siyá natatakót,” he says. Not me, sir, I am not like my big sister. I am a coward.

  I smile at him and brush his hair from his brow. “I would protect you, Roderick, I am not scared. Besides, there are no such things as ghosts.”

  Mang Selso narrows his eyes; he knows he has captured Roderick’s attention for the time being, and he smiles knowingly. “Do you know why there are no telephone poles set in the province?”

  “Why?” Roderick smirks, crossing his arms in front of him.

  “Because the asuwángs do not allow it. Their wings would get caught. So they send their helpers in the morning to cut the phone wires down. That is why they have remained for so long undiscovered.”

  Mang Selso’s father, Tay Fredrico, chooses this time to laugh and babble about spirits. It shakes Roderick’s confidence even more. He looks at the old Spaniard as if he were already a ghost. My mother sits beside me as I murmur soothing words in my brother’s ears and nudge him playfully. My heart longs to be little again and sit in my mother’s lap, but instead I sit like a proper lady, conscious of Feliciano’s eyes on me.

  Feliciano’s aunt, Aling Anna, sighs with disgust. “Selso, you should not speak of things you know nothing of. You might disturb the dead. Do you want to hear a true story? Nothing silly about witches flying in the night. A true story of ghosts?”

  Her tone is so serious, it sets my hair to attention. I raise my arm before me and look at the hairs.

  “O anó? Natatakót ka rin ba?” she asks me, the laughter coming from deep in her belly. What? Are you scared now, too?

  Even though she treats me nicely, sometimes I hate her bossiness. Sometimes I agree with Mang Selso, who says she is a nasty old woman who enjoys bringing out others’ embarrassment and setting it all on the table for everyone to feast on. I can feel her studying me now.

  “Do not hold this pain of what has happened to you close to your heart, Isabelle. You must let it go. No matter how painful. It will ruin you. If you keep silent, if you swallow it, it will ea
t you like a cancer.”

  I close my eyes and rest my head on Mama’s shoulder.

  “I tell you now, better to spit it all out, cry a hundred days over this matter, an entire year, than ruin your life over it. You must acknowledge it now, so that it has no power over you. I do not assume to know what you are going through, but I do know something about hate. That is what you are feeling right now, is it not?”

  My brother Roderick grows anxious at the silence. “Mama,” he moans.

  Aling Anna searches in her purse and brings forth a coin. Her hand is wrinkled and thin. There are deep cracked lines against the shiny brown of her fingers. She holds the coin out to Roderick to stop his crying. “O, itó.” She nods. Take it.

  Roderick looks over at Mama, then scurries forward like a little mouse and takes the coin. Everyone looks at her in surprise except Mama and me.

  She laughs a hard, hacking laugh at their expressions. Her teeth appear, and I am jolted as always by the color of them, red, dark crimson. As if someone has punched her in the mouth. She chews betel nuts compulsively.

  “You think I am ugly, stingy? I was not always this way. I know what most of you say: ‘She has so much money, owns so many stores. Why doesn’t she use any of it? Why does she keep saving it for a rainy day when that rainy day may never come?’ The reason is I never intend to spend that money, not on a rainy day or ever. It is not mine to spend. I do not deserve that money.”

  Aling Anna pulls her blanket around her shoulders, then takes her two fingers as a roach scutters by and squashes it. We grit our teeth at the sound. She takes the cigarette from her mouth, studies the burnt-down stub, and takes one more puff. She turns the lighted end, fading like a coal but still lit, and taps it to her tongue to kill the flame.

  “Inay!” Roderick shouts. Ma! He turns his head quickly against my arm.

  Aling Anna looks at him with amusement. “Shh, it is nothing. Only a little flame. That cannot hurt me. I have been through so much more. This little fire, you think that will hurt me? I will tell you about something much more painful. Will you sit still and listen, Roderick?”

  My brother nods, his face still turned halfway in toward me, as if Aling Anna will pull her face off next.

  She reaches out a hand to Feliciano, but he moves away. She looks at him for a long moment, then her shoulders sag in defeat. “I have failed in my care of you. But this story concerns your mother and your father, so you must listen.”

  At the mention of his parents, Feliciano glances up sharply. He never met his mother; she died soon after childbirth. His father is a stranger to him, the village drunk. Feliciano told me once how he wishes to be everything that his father is not. In this regard, and in many other ways, he is similar to Domingo.

  Aling Anna looks again to me. “Do not hold on to the bitterness, Isabelle, it will eat at your body like worms, and you will ruin your future because of it. I was not always this unhappy. I know what people call me behind my back, cheap, stingy, rude. Once, long ago, I was happy. I had many dreams, too. But I became bitter, and by the time I realized it, I had almost wished my whole life away.”

  ~ ghost children

  IT HAPPENED ON THE EVE OF OUR SEVENTH BIRTHDAY, this tragedy, when the great monsoon arrived, chasing out the dry climate and ushering in the tempestuous rainy season. My mother was like that wind system; she altered the course of my fate that night, the evening my twin sister, Janna, died.

  As the season went from parched to wet, I too changed inside, from innocent to bitter. It was fitting that the sky was weeping; it should mourn every time a child dies and the well of a mother’s love turns empty. They called that one Monsoon Minang; they did that even then, named the storms and floods that wreaked havoc after people who had similar temperaments. There was a young soprano at the time by that name; she was known to throw tantrums at the slightest flutter of a butterfly’s wings. They should have named that one Monsoon Mirabelle, after my mother.

  That evening when my destiny changed is a tattoo needled into my soul. I shall never forget it. The wind was already shifting, yet the night was thick with heat. Clouds rolled across the sky, illuminated by the moon. No one moved unless it was necessary. My aunts sat on corner chairs, fanning themselves with rolled-up newspapers, too exhausted from the heat even to play a game of sungka. Our windows were tied down to keep out the gales, but still the steaming gusts of air managed to get under the bamboo and nipa shutters and bang them against the house, like something wretched demanding to be let in.

  I sat anxiously at my sister’s bedside, but I was told not to bother her.

  “She is resting, Anna, for your birthday party tomorrow. Let her sleep, so that she will be strong and refreshed,” Mama said.

  I remember the exhaustion in Janna’s eyes and the warm rag that smelled of sukang illoco pressed against her brow. The rice wine, Papa believed, would chase the ills away. Janna’s hair was a matted clump, like the energy around her. It hovered like a low mist in the jungle, that badness surrounding her. It carried the scent of the graveyards, of wild weeds and dankness, and it swirled around us, chilling me.

  IN THE MORNING the crow of the rooster intruded into my sleep, and along with it came the crooning cries from Mama: “Janna, come back. Come back to me.”

  Her sobs pierced my slumber. I dreamt that a rooster had flown away with Janna, and Mama was chasing after it, calling, “Come back, come back.” When I awoke, excited for our party, I was told there would be no celebration, Janna was dead. All of her blood had vanished, the leukemia had claimed her. She lay stretched out on her bed, next to the brown, rosy-cheeked doll she loved so much.

  “My beautiful baby,” Mama sobbed.

  I saw no beauty, only a gray version of myself.

  I CLUNG TO Papa’s legs, moving aside for Mama’s skirts as she paced the floor in a trance. I trembled as the black of the padre’s mournful robes floated by in a swirl of smoke and funeral incense. The cloud of smoke was housed in a silver vessel, which he swung from a chain as he recited prayers that sounded more like incantations.

  Janna and I had always been given matching dresses, matching shoes, and matching hairstyles; would it be the same with the sickness?

  “Papa, am I sick, too?” I begged to be comforted.

  “Shh, hija, it is time to be quiet.” Papa patted my head distractedly as he swept up pieces of a broken vase he had thrown in his sorrow.

  “Mama, what happened?” I tugged at her skirts, but I could have been a fly on her back.

  The padre pulled me aside. “Your mother is grieving, child, be still.”

  “But what about me?”

  No one answered; I had been forgotten. I should have been put to sleep each night like a treasure, with my favorite blanket tucked in on all sides. I should have been comforted and sung to sleep. Instead, I became a ghost child myself.

  Mama was inconsolable. Having twins had made her special. Without the set she was just a rice farmer’s wife with rotting teeth and clothes to stone clean in the river. She had nothing to separate her from the other women in our village of stilt houses along the Rio Grande.

  THE EVENING BEFORE my sister’s burial, we had the “viewing” in our salas. It was not much of a living room, but still we called it that. Janna’s body was placed in a wooden coffin lined in pink satin. Chairs and mismatched boxes had been borrowed from the neighbors and arranged as seats in neat rows in front of the body. Even now I hate the feel and look of pink satin. I cannot even have a cup of coffee in my front parlor without the taste of death surrounding me. It curdles my skin.

  During the rosary, in between the beads of Hail Mary and Holy Mary, Mother of God, I tried to avoid the coffin. I could see the outline of Janna’s body with her hands folded atop her blue dress. The only dress I would not have a matching set to. Looking at that coffin was to see myself lying there. It is not true what they say about the dead, that they look as though they are asleep. She looked strange, far from sleep, a wooden carving of my sist
er, with waxen face and bright orange lipstick striped across her lips. Her mouth was a beacon in a sea of pink satin. I prayed that the lips not turn up in a smile.

  In all the chaos there was no one to console me. Thankfully Ate Yu saw this and sat beside me. She was my mother’s only true friend. She lived with us, free of rent in exchange for her help around the house. She was full-blooded Chinese but had been raised in the Philippines. She spoke fluent Mandarin and Tagalog. She held in her hand a statue of Kuan Yin, the Chinese goddess of mercy, carved in white jade, and on her neck she wore a crucifix.

  “Why do you have both?” I asked.

  “Ai-ya, don’t you know me by now, little pig? I wear both to cover double the prayers for your sister’s ascent into heaven,” she explained, brushing my bangs away from my brow. Her name, Yu, meant “jade,” and since her statue was made of it, I thought of her as the goddess Kuan Yin herself, or Sister Jade.

  “You are ready now to say good-bye to your sister?” Ate Yu asked. “It is our turn before they close the box and lock her away forever.”

  I felt as if I were choking, and my mouth trembled to stay calm. I could not get enough air. I had seen how people were saying good-bye, touching Janna’s hair, her hands, kissing her on the cheek. I did not want to do those things.

  “Why are they touching her, Ate Yu? What if they catch her sickness?” I asked.

  She put her hand on my shoulder. I felt myself steady under her touch. “That sickness does not pass to others. It is internal.” She pointed to her chest. “What they do, when they touch her, they are saying good-bye. They are asking for tawad. You know what that mean?”

  “Forgiveness,” I said.

  “Yes, you smart girl. You must tell her, ‘Sister, I forgive you for any wrongs, and in turn, please forgive me if I have wronged you.’ Otherwise, how will she get to heaven with so many apologies and obligations weighing her down? She will be like a bird with an anchor bound to its feet, unable to fly to paradise.”