“Ah, it’s you,” she said. She smiled at me slyly. Her face was very broad, very dark, and she had the look of a wild animal that had just dropped from a tree. “You’ve come out to play in the garden.”
I nodded solemnly. I was scared of Ligaya.
“Such a pretty dress,” she said, grabbing the skirt with a wet hand. “Can I borrow it?”
“I don’t think it would fit you,” I answered. This sent her into a fit of rich laughter, which echoed across the lawns. The garden seemed strangely deserted.
“Such lovely hair. Almost brown.” She reached out and took my braid in her hand, turning it over thoughtfully. “You could give me some of your hair. It’s such beautiful hair.”
“My mother said never to give anyone your hair,” I responded.
“And why not? Are you scared? Do you think I would put a spell on you? Maybe one day you would wake up and find that I had given you the body and face of an old woman.” She smiled, her perfect white teeth standing out against her dark skin. “You know, they shot a man last night. He was on the wall. They shot him and he came tumbling down. He was a bird caught in the tree, but he had no wings to fly away.”
I looked up at the wall, to the top, where the broken glass glittered in the sun.
“Listen,” said Ligaya, “what do you hear?”
“I hear crickets.”
“Crickets and other insects, and birds and the frogs in the fountain,” said Ligaya. “And do you know what they’re saying?”
I shook my head.
She howled at this, laughing so hard that some of the water sloshed out of the basin. “Maybe they’re calling your name, or mine.” She squinted to listen better. “No, it’s not your name.”
“What are they saying?” I asked.
Ligaya listened carefully. “Have you ever seen a dead man? Have you ever seen a dead man? That’s what they’re saying. Can’t you hear it?”
I couldn’t understand insects, not like Ligaya, who came from the island of Samar, where all witches come from. I looked nervously into the garden.
“Where are you going, Angela? I have a riddle, one that you will like.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“He sought a feast and found a bed,” she said. “What does it mean?” I was about to step back but she grabbed my arm. Her eyes lit up. “You’ll figure it out, smart thing like you.” She let me go. As I ran down the driveway toward the gate, her laughter followed me and I could feel her eyes on my back.
The guardhouse, a small cottage built into the wall by the gate, stood between me and the street beyond. From the other side of the wall, I could hear a junk peddler calling out, “Dyaryo, bote,” again and then again. I was out of breath. Ligaya’s handprint, wet on my arm, was disappearing in the heat. Inside the guardhouse, there was snoring, heavy snoring, and the sound of paper rustling gently. I moved to where I could see through the window. Babylon was asleep. There was a half-full bottle of Tanduay rum beside the chair, next to where his right hand hung down, ready to grasp it when he woke up. His shirt was open and his fat belly hung over his belt. On his lap was a comic book, which was disturbed with every intake of breath. I watched silently. On the floor beside his left hand, I saw the gun.
“Wake up,” I said. “Wake up!”
Babylon shook his head and blinked at me.
“Why are you here?” I said. “I thought my aunt gave you the day off.”
“Where should I be?” he answered. “This is what I like to do.”
“You should be watching a movie. Every time we give our guard a day off, he goes and watches a movie.”
“And what kind of movie does he go see? Action? People shooting each other, boom boom? I don’t need that. Go away. Let me sleep.”
“I hear you shot someone.”
“Your aunt told you that? Yeah, I shot someone last night.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you kill him?”
“I don’t know. Who are you anyway, the police? Maybe I’ll shoot you. Go away and let me sleep.”
“You’re drunk,” I said.
“So what? I wouldn’t shoot you if I was sober.”
We looked at each other as I pondered this and came to believe him. He was better left alone and wasn’t going to tell me anything anyway.
I wandered along the side of the house and into the back garden. My aunt kept a huge pig there, beside the maids’ quarters. I approached the pen nervously and then stood up on the railing watching it, not minding the smell. The pig was grunting cheerfully, probably hoping that I had brought some treat from the house. It had stiff white hairs on it and little black eyes that seemed to catch everything. I saw Bebeng walk out of the maids’ quarters.
“Ah, Angela,” she said, “look at this pig, munching away. On your Tita Elena’s birthday we will eat him.” She looked across the pigpen to the far end of the yard.
“He looks so happy,” I said. “Why do we have to kill him?”
“Because that’s what we do. Have you ever heard a pig being killed?”
I shook my head.
Bebeng took some rotted greens from a basin by the outside sink and tossed them to the pig. We watched him eat. “Pigs scream. They don’t howl like other animals. They cry out, like a man, a man being killed.”
I stepped off the railing, suddenly afraid of Bebeng, who had always seemed so kind to me.
“We kill a pig by piercing its neck with a bamboo stick. While he’s still alive, we bleed him into a bowl. He screams until he’s dead, until we bleed the life out of him. Everything is used. Every last drop of blood has a purpose. Don’t feel sorry for that pig. Feel sorry for men, who shed blood so uselessly.”
“What men?”
“What?” She hadn’t heard me.
“What men bleed?” I asked again.
“What men bleed, what men don’t—that’s not important. But any blood shed by any man is useless.”
Bebeng stood gazing at the pig with a sad smile on her face. She was still there when I walked away.
Past the pigpen, past the maids’ quarters, past the shed where the gardeners kept the lawn shears and the buckets for watering the shrubs, was the garage. My aunt kept her three cars there: the Mitsubishi, which she used, the Mercedes that had been Uncle Chuck’s and that she couldn’t bear to part with but didn’t drive, and my cousin’s white BMW that had replaced the black BMW after he drove it into a tree. I didn’t usually go near the garage. My mother didn’t want me hanging around the drivers, but I could hear their laughter. I glanced back at the house. No one was watching, no one that I could see. I tied my shoelace, which had come undone, and went to explore. Manong Cisco, who worked for Tita Elena and lived here, was fiddling with his radio. Manong Pepe, who drove Tita Baby, and Benny, our new driver, were bouncing peso coins off of each other, placing bets, cursing and yelling. Manong Cisco joined in, but he was quiet, and every now and then he would look over at Tita Elena’s house as if he thought Benny and Manong Pepe might be too loud. I didn’t know why Manong Pepe was always here. Tita Baby only lived one block over and it didn’t seem far enough to drive. I watched from behind Tita Baby’s Land Rover for a short time before the drivers noticed me.
“Angela!” exclaimed Benny. “Come join with us. You look like you could use some fun.”
“I don’t know how to play.”
“We’ll teach you,” he said.
“I have nothing to bet.”
Manong Pepe laughed hard at this, tearing up, but I did not even smile. Manong Cisco watched me nervously.
“The little señorita has nothing to bet,” said Manong Pepe.
“How sad,” said Benny. “Do you know what happens to people that have nothing?” He smiled at Manong Pepe, who was patting his bald head with a handkerchief. “Hey, Angela, if you’re so smart, answer that. What happens when people have nothing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t,�
�� said Manong Pepe.
Benny quieted him with a raised hand. “Angela, think hard. People want things that they don’t have.” He sat back on his heels, squinting against the sun. “You want to play with us, but you have no peso coin. Take his.” Benny looked over at Manong Cisco. “Go on. Take your Manong Cisco’s. He’s not going to say anything.”
Manong Pepe laughed again, but I stayed still.
“Yeah, you are smart,” said Benny. “I guess you know what happens to people who try to take things around here. Tell her, Cisco. Tell her what happens to them.”
“I don’t know, pare,” said Manong Cisco. “What are you talking about? You’re gonna scare the kid.”
“Not this one,” said Benny. He smiled at me as if we shared a secret. “Did you ever want to learn to fly, Angela?”
“Be the shortest flight ever,” said Manong Pepe. “You’re gonna fly straight down.”
Benny laughed loudly with him but then grew quiet. “You know what I’m talking about. I know you do, because you’re so smart. I’ve seen you watching people. And I’ve been watching you, Señorita Angelita. You hear everything, and you remember, so what do you think happened to that idiot son of a puta that tried to break into your tita’s house?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I asked Babylon. He doesn’t know either.”
“Shit. Babylon’s such a fucking drunk, he doesn’t even know what happened to his wife,” said Manong Pepe. He slapped Benny’s shoulder. When they were through laughing, Benny turned once more to me.
“What do you think, Angela? One second there is a man on the wall, and the next he’s gone.” Benny studied my face. His eyes were light-colored, like a mestizo. I’d heard my mother say Benny thought he was too good to be a driver. “Do you think he flew away?”
I shook my head.
“Here.” Benny dug around in his pocket and produced a red rubber ball—the cheap kind from the market. “Why don’t you go play with it, Angela, or are you too smart to play?”
“I can play,” I responded, holding his gaze. I took the ball and held it. I let it drop on the pavement, catching it after it bounced.
“Now you go play, and when you think you know what happened to that man, the one that flew straight down, you come and tell us, okay?”
I nodded slowly. I didn’t like Benny. I was glad to have a reason to leave the garage, to leave the drivers and their game.
At first I just bounced the ball along the pavement, losing it every few times, but this soon lost its charm. I started throwing it in the air a few feet above my head, then higher and higher, until it was just a speck and seemed to hover still in the air before racing downward. I managed to catch it most times. I thought of the invader—the man—the one who flew straight down, like my ball, and threw it higher still, as if this could answer the question. I sent the ball soaring upward until it was nothing but a small red pinprick against a bright blue sky. I threw it again, this time too high. I stood patiently and saw it returning to earth. It was too far away for me to catch. The ball bounced once on the driveway and then again. I chased after it, but it bounced again, ricocheting off a paving stone and landing somewhere in the back garden.
The tangle of the back garden was very different from the front. Trees reached their arms across the small dark paths. The paths wove in and out through the vegetation in ways that I could never remember. The ball had gone to the left, so I headed that way. I looked over my shoulder to see the drivers who stood watching me, now interested. Bebeng too had suddenly appeared and I saw Ligaya with the others, wiping her hands on her skirt. I heard the insects. It was noise I had heard all day, but now the sound was loud. There was the hum of crickets and abruptly the frogs and toads all started to croak. The birds were chirping now, lots of birds, and as I made my way along a path, the sounds grew louder. The broken glass at the top of the wall high above me glittered in the sunlight. The noise was loudest right beside the wall. I was drawn to the sound and to the broken glass shining at the end of the path. And there was the ball, waiting for me. It was in a clump of makahiya grass—grass that fainted as my shoes brushed against it. I bent down, the song of the insects humming in my ears, and picked up the ball. There were ants on it, too many ants. In the grass, the ants were moving in an army. I followed them with my eyes and then I saw a huge hand, dark and still, as if it were carved out of wood. A man lay facedown in the long grass, beneath the tangle of vines, in shadow. There were ants, masses of ants marching over my feet, crawling off the ball and down my arms, marching to that rising hum of noise and life in the garden. The ants were moving onto the body in two straight columns. There was a hole in his back, a hole from which he had bled, soaking his shirt, leaving wet sticky clumps on the grass. The noise of the garden was too loud now and made me wonder whether it was really insects and frogs, or rather a strange echo in my head. I smelled the blood above the fragrant frangipani, above the rotting leaves. The man’s head was turned to one side as if he were sleeping and I crouched down to see his face, the eyes shut tight with thick lashes, his mouth slightly open with still, full lips—he was somehow held in a dream, in a better sleep than the cold dead that happened with guns and invasions and guards and walls. He had the sleep of a tired man who could never be woken up, who would go on dreaming forever.
AFTER MIDNIGHT
BY
ANGELO R. LACUESTA
J.P. Rizal
When we finally roll out, our seats are pitched up like we’re on a plane lifting from the tarmac. My window’s open a crack and I’m breathing the firecracker fog like I’m swimming in it.
A harness of greasy chains moors us to the truck. There’s a little bit too much give. We lag a couple of seconds on the turns and sway loosely whenever there’s enough room to accelerate. The truck hits a pothole and we feel it late because our front wheels are off the ground.
There are still people out at this hour. They’re gawking at us as we rumble down the street. They look like they’ve never seen a smashed car and a tow truck in their lives. The girls are on the sidewalks sitting in plastic chairs with their butts out and their elbows on their knees. The glow of big-screen TVs is pumped out from the shadows in the doorways behind them. They look at me like I’m the one to feel sorry for and I can almost hear them clucking to themselves.
It doesn’t matter. It’s way after midnight now, and I’m far from the places where there are people I know. Actually, we really aren’t that far, but there’s a big difference between that side and this side and J.P. Rizal is the line in the middle.
The driver’s arm darts out of the truck window to flick a cigarette into the haze. I try my best to remember their faces but it’s too dark. I should have told them which route to take home but it’s pretty straightforward and I feel like they’re doing me a favor and I don’t want to mess things up. It’s New Year’s Eve and nobody would take my business and these guys came all the way from Caloocan or something like that.
I switch on the stereo even though I’m fully expecting it not to work. Instinct, I guess. While I’m still trying to remember what we were listening to before it happened, the speakers blast Patsy Cline singing “Walkin’ After Midnight.” Everything starts coming together.
She was messing with her phone, trying to make calls, trying to text, cursing every time it failed. A security guard came over waving his big flashlight in the air. He asked us if we were okay and I asked him if he knew the number of a towing company. He said no and walked over to my car shaking his head like it was his property or like this was any of his business. People get drunk, people get crazy this time of the year, the security guard was saying. I was in the middle of making all these calls and I got in his face and he sort of backed off. He was thinking maybe I was the one who was drunk or crazy on something. I gave him attitude, like things could be worse, buddy—it could be you instead of me. I stood around like I was a congressman and the pale girl with me was some hot starlet, when all I am is a guy making a living writin
g ad copy.
We heard the truck coming before we saw it. I was just about to give up and leave the car right in the middle of the street. The front of it was a lopsided mess but the rest of it was still an unmarred black, the nighttime sheen on the hood cutting through all that gunpowder smoke in the air.
There was a thin man and a fat man. It would have been funny if they weren’t there to tow my car. The fat man was just the driver and the muscle. He unloaded the chains from the truck and went under the car to hook them up. The thin man did most of the talking. He told us there was no room in the truck and we needed to get back into the car. I’d never been in any situation like this so it seemed like the most logical thing to do. I’d considered hailing a cab and making a convoy but it was all too much trouble.
We crawled back inside and the fat man pulled on another chain coming off the pulley. The tires lifted from the ground and the car jerked on the chains like it was a little toy. He kept pulling until I heard the front grill crunch hard against the top of the pulley. I gripped the steering wheel like an idiot and Andy giggled. She looked like every bit of her was ready to party again. She had her legs folded under her thighs and she was smoking a cigarette, just like I’d found her earlier, sitting and smoking in the VIP section at Club Vetica as if she’d been born there, which as far as I know is the only way you ever get into the VIP section of any joint worth going to.
She had someone else’s hand on her knee and it belonged to Gil Gordon. I recognized the congressman from the south because he was in the papers that morning. She was in the middle of shouting something to somebody but I didn’t want to waste a second. I waved to her across the velvet rope and I wasn’t surprised that it took a while for her to recognize me. She stood and bent across the barrier to kiss my cheek and I smelled the booze on her breath. The congressman kept staring, wondering who the fuck I was.
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