She did not mention my father’s name for a long time, until he began appearing in her dreams begging for forgiveness.
“He came to me again last night, your worthless father,” she told me once. “As if his apologies meant anything.”
“Why can’t you just forgive him?” I blurted out, tired of her endless bitterness.
“Dull girl,” she turned to me. “What makes you think any number of apologies is enough? How can someone like you judge the actions of your elders? In the old country your tongue would be cut into eight parts for such an impudent question! Do you say this to hurt me? Have I not suffered enough? Must I also take needles from you and pierce my eyes? Ungrateful child. Sometimes I pity you — you are only half of me, so only half of you has worth. The other part, the fire that burns without sense, comes from your father, worthless as he is!”
I was unable to reply, stunned by the multiple levels of her verbal assault. The sickly-sweet taste of duhat permeated my mouth and I fought not to retch.
“You must learn to listen to your mother, listen to what is true,” she said as her face softened. “You cannot choose what you are but you can choose what you become. Do you understand? If you applied a little of what is inside your head you would see.”
“How can you hate him so much?” I asked at her with tears in my eyes.
“Some things can never be forgiven,” she told me. “Besides, he should also apologize to you.”
But my father never appeared in my dreams.
IV
WE ARRIVED AT the Pavilion of the Dragon just as a light drizzle began to fall. I remember thinking how unnecessary our parasols were — the touch of rain was so fine it was almost imperceptible.
The Pavilion was raised on a dais of many steps, its eastern, southern, and western sides open to the early morning air, its northern side a huge wall of polished stone. Four pillars raised the ornate ceiling high, and in the center, squat and immobile, sat the Bell.
The Bell was the height of three grown men and had been there long before I was born. I had seen it many times before and, aside from its imposing dimensions, found it quite ordinary — like a gigantic pear whose novelty wore away with time. Its surface was decorated with a bas relief of a curling dragon, the most powerful creature of the old country. I had heard a few stories about it from other people — of its majesty, its wondrous magic, of the Seven Great Dragons of the Celestial Court — but, of course, this was Hinirang, where there were no dragons.
The Bell was just was a bell.
My mother stopped reverently at the eastern side and closed her eyes. When too much time passed with no word or motion from her, my impatience betrayed me.
“There’s no one here, mother. Can’t we go back to sleep?” I felt a spark growing inside me. There was obviously nothing to see, nothing to do.
“Be still,” she said softly.
“But Mother,” I frowned, “What am I supposed to see?” As soon as the words were out, I cringed, expecting her usual hurtful imprecations.
Instead, she whispered.
“The Dragon.”
V
EACH TSINO PERSON has several names that are used at different times in life and death: true name, birth name, family name, milk name, child name, nickname, use name, professional name, the heroic name if you became someone of import, the name you gave to non-members of your immediate family, the name you gave to foreigners, and the name you left as payment at the Black Gates.
If you were a woman you added several more: your young woman name, your smoke name, your name of respect, your seasonal name, and more depending on your circumstances — married, unmarried, widowed, firstborn, lastborn, beautiful, ordinary, tainted, or dead.
My mother’s smoke name, given to her by my father when they first met seven days before their wedding, was Lúng Yânjìng, Dragon Eyes. He said that looking into her eyes was like locking stares with a dragon — such was the depth of her gaze that it swallowed him whole, a capitulation he willingly performed because of his duty and her beauty. Even after they were married, my father called her by her smoke name, but only in the privacy of our home.
But growing up, whenever I looked into my mother’s eyes, I did not see a dragon. Her eyes could pierce me as if she saw see directly into my soul, yes, but it had always been something I could fight. She did not have a dragon’s power of dominance, only the ability shared by all mothers which all daughters must, sooner or later, learn to accept.
Standing at the Pavilion of the Dragon, all I saw in her eyes was sorrow laced with an unfathomable bitterness.
I thought that a real dragon’s eyes should never show despair.
“What dragon?” I asked my mother, rolling my eyes as we began to climb the stairs towards the bell.
At that moment, I heard a tremendous sound that shook my bones. A powerful wind lifted me off my feet and tore the parasol from my hand before setting me down again. I felt the sting of rain like miniature spears drenching me completely, uncountable drops that fled the Bell’s vicinity. I closed my eyes in panic, thinking the end of the world had come. When I opened them a moment later, my mother was gone, and where the Bell once stood was the face of the Dragon.
Its eyes were the size of the moon and the color of old jade, with only the barest hint of green. Its sinuous form, curling and uncurling, was resplendent with the hues of dreams — opal, amber, turquoise and pearl. And it spoke with the voice of ten thousand storms, all other sounds retreating before its presence.
I am the Dragon of the Bell.
And all at once, there was only perfect silence.
VI
MATERNAL RESPECT, REVERENCE and fear — these attributes are imbedded into every Tsino child from the moment of birth, sometimes even earlier; there is no escaping this reality. But what I felt in the presence of the Dragon trumped all of it, every feeling I knew, every sensation.
VII
THE DRAGON SPOKE, its eyes unblinking.
Learn to see.
“See what?” I managed to ask in a small voice, sounding as if I stood on the other side of an endless ocean. “See what?”
VIII
MY MOTHER SAW nothing but the dragon carving on the Bell, and heard nothing but the peal of distant thunder.
“I don’t understand,” she said, her voice heavy with disappointment. “I thought something would happen. Rising Jade Lady sounded so certain. Could I have mistaken her meaning?”
“Let us go home, mother,” I told her, taking her hand. She did not notice that we shared only one parasol, for the Dragon’s breath had blown mine away forever.
From that night on, my mother never spoke to me about her dreams, not knowing that Rising Jade Lady’s mission was already completed. My father also ceased to beg for forgiveness, perhaps realizing that he could do it forever when my mother’s time to pass beyond the Black Gates came.
I never told her about my uncertain conversation with the Dragon in the Bell. It was the only thing I had that was mine alone, not half hers nor half my father’s.
I began to teach myself patience, waiting for the day when I could finally be free.
When I became a woman, my mother finally succeeded in becoming a ghost and abandoned all the shame and sorrow she carried with her. She weighed no more than a shadow but smiled when she realized the end was near.
I sat by her bedside until her spirit departed, braiding her hair, painting her fingernails with patterns of orchids. She never closed her eyes, wanting to see what was to be seen, wanting to know what she had worked so hard to accomplish.
“I can see the Black Gates,” she whispered to me. “So large, so big.”
It was only when she sighed deeply that I knew she had passed on, and I felt the betrayed and stunted love I still held for her suddenly wash over me like a towering wave. She had never asked for my forgiveness, not even at her deathbed. Perhaps she expected to do so in my dreams.
When I could not cry, I looked at the measure of my hatr
ed of her and found that it had evaporated in the intervening years when I failed to add to its supply. But still my tears refused to fall.
Then I realized the truth I knew since I was a girl of eleven — that dragon eyes can never show despair, not until they learn to see.
The next day, with eyes of another, I began to live the rest of my life; half my mother’s, but somehow all my own.
How Rosang Taba Won a Race
I. An Introduction
DOWN IN THE busy markets of Binondo is a drinking place, Rosa’s, where visitors and roughnecks are often found making trouble, noise, or love. In that place, inebriated men circulate a story, repeated with delight and embroidered with each telling. The Katao of Hinirang enjoy telling it most, because it features the stunning victory of one of their own against an Ispaniolan gentleman.
Today, one hundred years from its first incarnation, different people continue to assign different meanings to the story, but all hold in common its having essentially occurred: as a subversive comment on the conqueror/conquered status quo, as an anecdote on gender role reversal, as the first shout in the inevitable revolution that would return Hinirang to its own people, as a cautionary tale of arrogance and comeuppance, or as a simple tale of a woman who used her mind to achieve triumph in the face of an impossible foe.
What follows is a retelling of this famous tale, rendered from various records, sources and interviews, both anecdotal and established, but replete with the embellishments, speculations of dialogue and motive, and internal sidebars accumulated by its continuous evolution as a narrative.
This is the story of Rosang Taba (who gained a certain notoriety among the pale-skinned elite as Rosa Gordura, and among the foreign merchants and traders as Rosa the Fat) and how she won a footrace against Ser Jaime Alonzo Pietrado ei Villareal — champion fencer, marksman, runner, swimmer, horseman, and the pride of the Ispaniola-in-Hinirang.
II. A Challenge and A Wager are made1
IT BEGAN ONE afternoon, during a special merienda held at the residence of Alejandro Baltran Alessio du Verrada ei Ramirez, Guvernador-Henerale of Hinirang. The occasion being celebrated was the defeat of a small force of insurgent natives north of Ciudad, and the hero of the hour was the young commander of the Ispaniola force, Ser Jaime Alonzo Pietrado ei Villareal. The two men sipped chocolate from Mejico and discussed things only men-of-action particularly cared about, and were later joined by the Guvernador-Henerale’s mistress, Andreia Carmen Jimenez ei Rojillo, freshly returned from confession from the Katedral Grandu.
They were seated at the spacious courtyard of the Guvernador-Henerale’s residence, a pleasant arbor of shady trees, flowerbeds, and smooth-stoned paths, where the breeze was the most aromatic and the heat less oppressive than elsewhere.
“Ultimately, I must concede to the fact that the lovely Seóra has pointed out to me,” Ser Pietrado said, looking at Andreia directly in the eye. “These Katao du Hirinang, these indios, are not much of a threat at all. Certainly not for the flower of Ispaniola. They are lazy, boorish and unorganized. They have no courage, no morals, no civilization. If not for us, they would burn as pagans.”
“Ser Pietrado, you have misunderstood my words,” Andreia met his gaze evenly. “If the Katao were given equal opportunity, then I suspect your words would be emptier than they are now. Any one of them is your equal.”
“I can defeat any one of them in anything. At any time, anywhere,” Ser Pietrado boasted. “They are like animals.”
“Ser Peitrado!” the Guvernador-Henerale admonished him. “Those are words not in keeping with the character of a gentleman.”
Before the young man could reply, another voice interrupted their conversation.
“I could beat you in a race.”
The three turned to see who had spoken. A very fat serving woman, carrying a tray of cold refreshment for them, was biting her lips in despair.
“Forgive me, my lords, my lady,” she spoke in halting Ispaniola, “I did not mean to speak my thoughts out loud.”
“No, no,” said Andreia, gliding to the woman’s side. “But did you mean what you said?”
“Opo, Seóra,” the woman replied, “I want to show the gentleman that we are not all stupid. And we are certainly not animals.”
Ser Pietrado turned to the Guvernador-Henerale. “Ser, if this is the kind of servant you keep, I—”
The Guvernador-Henerale, impressed by the fact that the woman had courage to speak, silenced him with a gesture. He turned to the servant and asked her, “What is your name?”
“I am called Rosang Taba, my lord.”
Ser Pietrado’s aristocratic lips lifted in a sneer. “Rosa Gordura. How appropriate.”
“And what do you do for me?” the Guvernador-Henerale asked her.
“I am one of the house servants, my lord. I thought my lords and the lady would like some more chocolate,” Rosang Taba said, glancing at the cups and saucers on her tray.
“And do you think you can actually defeat this gentleman, Ser Pietrado, in a… what did you say?”
“In a race, my lord.”
“A race?”
“Opo, Ser.”
“And you are certain of this?”
“Opo, Ser.”
“Then you shall have your chance.”
Ser Pietrado raised his eyebrows. “Your Excellency, certainly you jest! This, this obese woman is no match for me in anything, especially in a race!”
Andreia fixed him with a glance. “You can beat her, yes?”
“Of course I can!” Ser Pietrado nearly shouted. Andreia simply smiled.
Rosang Taba cleared her throat timidly. “I just ask two things, my lord. As the noble gentleman has said, I am hardly fit. May I ask him for a head start of fifteen paces?”
“Take fifty paces!” Ser Peitrado laughed at the absurdity of it all. “What is your other request, that I race blindfolded?”
“Hindi po, Ser. But that you allow me to choose where we shall race.”
“Then do so. We shall race tomorrow afternoon. Let me know where,” Ser Pietrado said.
“Jandro,” Andreia said to the Guvernador-Henerale, “How about a small wager?”
“Ah, certainly,” the Guvernador-Henerale smiled at the woman he loved.
“I cannot possibly fail the Seóra’s expectations,” Ser Pietrado told Andreia.
“Who said I’m wagering on you?”
After Ser Pietrado left in a huff, the Guvernador-Henerale wagged a finger at Andreia and moved to comfort his favorite commander. And the most beautiful woman in Ciudad, without looking directly at the fat serving woman, whispered words only Rosang Taba could hear.
“Manalo ka.”
III. Rosang Taba, in brief2
ROSANG TABA’S PARENTS had longed for a child. Her father prayed to the spirits of his people, those whose names were forever etched in the collective memory of the mountain tribe he had left behind when he sought his fortune in Ciudad. For many years, he called out to the gods of the wood and sky but it was as if his gods chose not to hear his prayers. He always thought he was being punished for abandoning the ways of his father, grandfather, and all those who came before him.
Her mother, a kitchen servant in the service of the Residencia of the Guvernador-Henerale, offered prayers to the icons of her masters. She would stand outside the Katedral Grandu and silently implore the Tres Hermanas, that inscrutable Trinity of Women in whose name the Ispaniola had come. But they also seemed deaf to prayer, and the poor woman decided that perhaps the Tres Hermanas suspected that her piety had an ulterior motive.
It was after they ceased to pray to both the spirits of the Hinirang and the goddesses of the conquerors that a child came into their lives. In the endless delirium of joy that characterized their love for the child, they named her Rosa and proceeded to give her everything their meager stations in life allowed them.
Her father, riddled by the guilt of having left the mountains, taught her all the stories of his people and inst
illed in her a pride in her ancestry. Rosa’s heart grew rich with her father’s every telling of legend, fable and myth.
Her mother established Rosa’s presence by her side in the kitchen and taught her the secrets of the Ispaniolan sideboard — its medley of rich sauces, creams, and spices, and attempted to share with her child her appreciation for the language, culture, and faith of her masters.
It was thus that not only Rosa’s heart grew, but her mind, spirit, and body as well, as if her external nature struggled to keep pace with the leaps and bounds her inner nature knew. She drank deeply of her father’s tales and devoured the fruits of her mother’s suspect conversion. By the time she was a young woman, it was inevitable that her name would change to reflect what to all who saw her was obvious. She became Rosang Taba — of broad shoulders and massive girth, insatiable appetites for food and learning, and an almost overwhelming pride in her mountain ancestry.
IV. Rosang Taba and her father converse3
“BAKIT MO GINAWA iyon?”
“Hindi ko po masikmura ang mga sinasabi niya. Tinawag niya tayong mga hayop!”
“Bigkas-hangin lamang iyon.”
“Hindi po tayo hayop! Hindi po tama na tawagin nila tayong ganoon, na parang mas mababa sa kanila.”
“Rosa! Hindi mo ba naiintindihan ang nagawa mo? Hindi mo ba kilala kung sino ang napili mong—”
“Kilala ko po, Tatay. Kilala ko po.”
“Hindi ko ipinagkakaila sa iyo na magsabi ng nilalaman ng puso mo, nguni’t… paano—?”
“Mayroon po akong naisip na paraan.”
“Karera…”
“Kung magawa ko po ito, kung manalo ako —”
“Sa tingin mo ba mapapalitan mo ang pagtingin nila sa Katao? Sa isip mo ba mababago mo ang pagiisip nila?”
The Kite of Stars and Other Stories Page 6