As Mike agonizes over his decision, I reflect on my own experience. While Serenata seems to be the eternal woman to him, I have encountered only the playful and the helping side to her. Meanwhile, Mike recites poetry.
“For stern as death is love,
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
Nor floods sweep it away.”
“Mike, what a wonderful poem! Did you write it?”
“No, but I wish I did. They’re King Solomon’s words, actually.”
I tell Mike that if he feels that way about Serenata, he should go through with the ceremony and I would help him. Mike smiles with relief and says that indeed, he is set on his plan.
IT IS ALMOST twelve o’clock on seventh night of the new moon, picked by the soothsayer as the most fortuitous for a turol taymah. I am with Mike on a beach house in Mauboh. Like all other houses in Mauboh, it is built on stilts over the water. There is an open lanai which is located on deeper water. Below the lanai is a bamboo enclosure in the sea for holding live catch of really big fish like fifty- or hundred-pound tuna.
Although I have agreed to support Mike in his decision, I am more worried over Serenata than Mike, himself. So far, everything I’ve heard had been from Mike’s side: his love for the mermaid, and his decision to be engaged to her. I had never heard Serenata’s point of view. Did she feel the same way as Mike? Did she want this betrothal? On Mike’s behalf, though, I am worried about the cash he has given to Jamalul for the dowry. The bridal dress, the gold bracelet, necklace, ring, and the tortoise shell comb are laid out on a table of bamboo slats in the open lanai of the beach house. My gift is a jar filled with fresh sugarcane cut into eighths which I put beside the jewelry on the table. I remember Apo Sofiya saying that mermaids loved sugarcane.
Jamalul has inveigled an imam from out of town, to come for the turol taymah. From the way he speaks, the imam does not know that Serenata is a mermaid. He thinks he is solemnizing a betrothal between a runaway maiden and a Muslim foreigner. He waits calmly for Jamalul to bring the girl to the tryst in the beach house under cover of night. Mike cannot sit still for a minute. He keeps going from one window to another, straining to see through the faint light that casts a silvery coating over the sea. After making him sit down, I engage in small talk to calm him.
“Recite to me one of your poems that fit this occasion, Mike.”
“Only a line from Ariel’s song lingers in my mind: Nothing of him doth fade/But doth suffer a sea-change/Into something rich and strange. Dare I suffer this death Shakespeare is talking about?”
Mike sits quietly, brooding over his long and slender hands, an index finger stroking gently the back of the other. Only the sound of waves gently slapping against the posts of the house breaks the silence. I try to take his mind to more mundane matters.
“Mike, Serenata has never shown herself to Jamalul. How can he bring her here?”
“I have already told Serenata where I will be waiting. Jamalul only has to keep a lookout for her. As soon as he spots movement towards this house, he will alert me.”
A soft whistle pierces the night.
“That was Jamalul!” Mike exclaims and, taking his flashlight, runs through the doorway to the lanai and clatters down the bamboo stairs which lead to the enclosure beneath the lanai. As I run behind him, my flashlight picks up the shine of silver janggay lying on the doorway which Mike’s shoes nearly trample. I feel a flash of irritation at Jamalul’s carelessness: he must have flung them there while he was bringing in the rest of Serenata’s dowry. The metal fingernails are cold and wet, strands of seaweeds clinging to the pointed ends. As I put them in my beach bag, I can see that the other gifts are all in order, except for the jar of sugarcane which is now lying on the floor, empty. I feel an icy prickle on my nape.
I make my way gingerly down the wet bamboo stairs after Mike and stand behind him on a small landing which is just above the water level. Over his shoulder, I see movement in the water. There is a flash from the silvery scales of a powerful tail that propels a sleek body away from us to the far end of the enclosure. Mike leans forward eagerly and stretches out both arms, calling out endearments. Suddenly, he becomes motionless and silent for a long moment. From behind, I strain for a glimpse of what has frozen him in place.
“That is not Serenata,” he says, his voice holds regret but also relief. He turns and bumps into me, nearly toppling me into the sea. I hold on to the side of the ladder while he climbs it two rungs at a time. “That is only a dolphin there in the enclosure. Somehow, I knew she would not come; she could not commit herself to any man.”
He stomps away angrily on the floor above me, and drowns out my voice calling for him to come back as he loudly tells the imam that the ceremony was off, the bride had not come.
The words stick in my throat when I see a pair of white arms that reach out gracefully from the darkness of the sea. Hands with long tapered fingers like white candles hold on to a length of bamboo in the enclosure’s fence. A naked back gleams whitely through the mass of hair that falls to stream fanlike in the water.
“Serenata,” I breathe with awe. She turns her head, oh! so slowly, and looks at me.
In the half light of the new moon, I can make out her lovely heart-shaped face with its pointed chin and wide, clear eyes. Moonglow is reflected in shifting patterns over the surface of the water and, for a fleeting moment, I see in the wavering light, not a mermaid, but a ten-year-old girl clutching at the bamboo fence. We stare at each other.
“Oh, it’s you,” I finally say, in recognition. But she is silent as she looks at me gravely before she fades away in a haze of silver moonlight and I am seeing Serenata once again.
“Serenata, thank you.” She listens calmly before she turns and lifts a bamboo latch to swing a gate open. She raises an arm—is it to wave at me or to begin her swim to the open sea? For some time after she has gone, I continue to stand there, not quite believing what had happened.
Why had Mike failed to see Serenata? Or was it she who chose not to reveal herself to him? I stand on the landing, turning over the questions in my mind.
The imam clears his throat to tell me he is waiting in the lanai above. He helps me up the bamboo stairs and walks me home in the early dawn light.
Later that morning, I go to Mermaid’s Rock to hide the jewelry in secret niches and I weigh down the dress against the tide with stones. Again, I bring gifts fit for a child: a jar of cut sugarcane and another of bee honey.
“I’m giving you my Amboh’s janggay in exchange for yours,” I whisper to the rocks around. “I know you’ll want to use them. The little girl—thank you for bringing her back.” The breeze picks up, fanning my face and lifting my hair up and down briskly.
For the first time in many months, I feel like laughing out loud in joy, just like a little child.
OVER FIVE YEARS have passed when I bump into Mike at Kawa-kawa Boulevard along the sea in Zamboanga City. What was new? I ask him. Actually, I married a Tausug girl from Busbus, he says diffidently. Oh, and did I, perhaps know her? I am surprised when he mentions her name. I recall that she was tall and lissome in her sarong, brown skinned, with straight, black hair that reached down to her waist. I don’t comment on her obvious similarity to Serenata. Although still in her teens, at the time Mike was in Jolo, she was married to her second husband, a fisherman. Her first husband had been a Marine from Luzon who had left her crying at the pier when their unit shipped out.
There follows an awkward pause which I fill by inquiring brightly if he still wrote poetry. Oh, yes, I try, he says. In fact, I am here in pursuit of the Muse, he jokes, as he shows me a small spiral notebook with a pen clipped to it. Then you must let me read some of your recent writings, I say eagerly. I remember how good your poems were. But he only shrugs his shoulders and throws up those poet’s hands of his before shoving the notebook into a pocket. He turns away to gaze longin
gly southward to sea to where Jolo was located over the horizon.
Stella for Star
Yvette Tan
It came in a shoebox, a shriveled little thing that could easily fit in the cradle of two cupped hands. Paco had thought it was a kitten. Dorian had taken the baby in his arms, his voice going all soft and indulgent as he whispered soothing nonsense in its ear. That was how Paco and Dorian found themselves a child.
Finding a baby on one’s doorstep causes a number of complications, at least if you want to keep it legally. The adoption process was arduous, especially for two gay men, but not so difficult that it couldn’t be expedited with liberal amounts of money stuffed into the right pockets. Still, it was some time before they could finally call Stella their own.
Stella. Personally, Paco didn’t care for the name but Dorian was a movie buff and had insisted on naming her after Kim Hunter’s character in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Stella, for Star.
Paco thought it was all bullshit, but that was Dorian for you: a tragic, hopeless romantic. The stories he loved were always the ones that ended in melodramatic failure. Paco often ignored Dorian’s erroneous wordplay and unsuccessful attempts at speaking English even though they grated on his nerves and made his teeth itch, attributing his patience to love. And didn’t he love Dorian? Didn’t he rescue him from that small provincial town, a boy whose only pride in life was winning the 1989 Miss Gay Pageant? Didn’t he give him a new name, educate him, initiate him into the comfortable city lifestyle to which his little barrio boy was now accustomed? Did it matter that their age gap was seventeen years wide, and that he wanted a girl every now and then? Was it going to matter now that they had a child?
Paco thought these things as he held the baby in his arms, her hungry little mouth attacking the rubber nipple from which flowed her nourishment for the night. He traced a pinky from her forehead down to the tip of her nose, marveling at her minute perfection, marveling for the hundredth time how, despite how small she was when they found her, she hadn’t needed any medical attention, that her pediatrician had declared her as healthy as a baby could be, even though she was thin and didn’t like milk very much. He was lucky. They were both lucky. Stella was a blessing. A perfect little angel who was going to bring them luck. Was this how all fathers felt?
Stella scrunched her nose and continued sucking. He still thought she looked like a cat, her almond eyes large and pointed at the ends, their pupils constantly dilated with irises that were more oval than round. The bridge of her nose was sharp, and her cheekbones were beginning to show prominence, just like her ears, which were slim and elfin, tapering to blunt points that reached towards the heavens. Never mind that that one of her legs was shorter than the other and that she would have a slight limp when she got older; she was his daughter and he would make sure that she would have the best medical attention to correct the problem. She stared at him as she suckled, and he swore that her eyes held a kind of intelligence that sparkled like stars. Maybe Dorian did pick the right name after all.
“Manananggal Terrorizes Malate” said the headline on the tabloid. The same headline appeared every campaign season, as if the threat of flying monsters was enough to get the right politicians elected. Dorian’s eyes devoured the article greedily. Tabloids were his only source of comfort in his new home, the mad city that he could never adjust to, not even after living in it for six years. He was seated by the window, trying to catch the last of the afternoon light, which was quite futile since most of it was blocked by the big acacia tree that stood right outside. Beside him, her duyan rocking softly in the afternoon quiet, Stella demanded to be fed.
Dorian smiled as he lifted the baby to his chest, bottle in hand, the theme from Titanic softly issuing from his lips. Stella was a dream come true. How many nights had he stayed awake, praying for concrete proof of Paco’s love for him? How many nights? And the days before that, when he was sure that Paco was seeing girls. Girls! How could he compete with that? Oh, he knew that Paco used prostitutes; he could smell their cheap scent on his lover’s clothes. He could not help but feel insecure. Why should Paco need anyone else when he had someone to go home to?
Stella refused to be suckled, tiny hands pushing the rubber nipple aside while she screamed obscenities in her private tongue. Dorian was at a loss. She wouldn’t feed, she wasn’t wet or sleepy… what else could she want? He remembered a scene from The Blue Lagoon where Christopher Atkins put his finger in his newborn baby’s mouth in an effort to stop its crying. Out of sheer desperation, he stuck his own finger inside Stella’s wailing mouth. Stella bit down on it hard, teeth that weren’t there before biting down on Dorian’s delicate skin, drawing blood.
Dorian yelped, pulled his hand back, almost dropping the baby. He set her down on her duyan before bandaging his finger. The wound wasn’t deep. It would heal. He returned to Stella’s side. There was still some blood on Stella’s lips, red wetness licked away by a pink tongue that seemed too thin, too long to be human. There was a sheen in her eyes as she looked up at him expectantly. Did he understand? Dorian sank to his knees beside the duyan.
“Mothering suits you,” Paco teased as he poured apricot-scented oil onto his palms and smoothed it down Dorian’s back. Dorian purred contentedly, his muscles relaxing beneath Paco’s expert hands. Giving massages was one of the few things that Paco truly enjoyed. The rhythmic movement of his hands against Dorian’s heated skin; the knowledge that there was nothing between them but the slippery scent of apricots; the thought that he held the vessels that contained Dorian’s veins, the tunnels through which ran the blood that loved him. He bent low, nibbling on Dorian’s ear while his hands traced concentric circles down Dorian’s back. Dorian flipped himself over, putting his hands around Paco’s neck and pulling him down. Paco didn’t resist and soon, they were kissing. It had been a while since the last time they made love and Paco realized how much he had missed Dorian’s smell, was reminded of how much he delighted in the feel of Dorian, slack but breathing heavily as Paco’s tongue tried to convey that same delight to his lover. He was nibbling on the inside of Dorian’s thigh when a high-pitched shriek cut through the night air, utterly destroying the moment. Paco began to get up but Dorian stopped him.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
“I can take care of it,” Paco replied. “You rest.”
“I’ll do it,” Dorian repeated, getting up and putting on a robe.
When he had left, Paco lay still on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Dorian had been taking his responsibility towards Stella far too seriously lately. He had quit his job at the boutique so they wouldn’t have to hire a yaya for their child. He insisted on being the only one to feed and change Stella, which was fine since Paco despised baby chores. Paco couldn’t understand why such devotion bothered him. Wasn’t this what he always wanted? Dorian at home, away from the world, separate from others that might tempt him away? And wasn’t this good for Stella, too? Stella, who, until Dorian had been spending all his time with her, had been thin and mangy and had looked exactly like the thing she was: a baby they had found on their doorstep. Now she was plump and looked considerably more human; her acquired fat had filled out her cheeks, making her large cat-eyes look smaller, less threatening. Her once sinewy limbs and painfully thin torso were now baby soft and baby smooth, and when he tried not to think about her eyes and ears and uneven legs too much, he had to admit that she looked rather cute. That, and the fact that she kept Dorian home all the time, made him appreciate her even more.
Dorian returned, naked, closing the door slowly behind him. His right hand was clamped onto his left bicep where his robe was wrapped, the white terrycloth now stained red with blood. Paco got up, worried.
“Dorian, you’re bleeding,” he began.
Dorian ignored him, heading straight for the medicine cabinet and rummaging through it for bandages.
“Dorian, let me see,” Paco said as he approached the younger man and took hold of his arm.
&n
bsp; Dorian jerked it away. “I scratched it on the crib,” he mumbled hastily before retreating to the other side of the room with the medical supplies.
“Scratch?” Paco asked incredulously, “It looks more like a gash, Dorian.”
“It’s nothing serious,” Dorian said as he bandaged his wound. “I’m going to the market tomorrow, Paco,” he said as he climbed into bed. “I think that Stella’s ready to be weaned.” He fell asleep, leaving Paco to wonder about the dazed, tired, but blissful expression on his lover’s face. Somehow, it left a bad taste in Paco’s mouth that wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard he tried to wash it out.
Dorian was scared. It had been a month since he had discovered Stella’s true nature and two weeks since the night she had tried to take a bite off his arm. It was their secret, his and Stella’s. He might be naïve but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what would happen if someone heard of this. They would take Stella away. Not even Paco would understand. It killed him inside but he knew that he must keep Stella’s identity a secret if he wanted to keep his baby.
He watched Paco from the other side of the room, taking joy in the way he doted on their daughter. His attention returned to the tabloid he was reading, the one that said “Manananngal Looks Like Ex-President” in big red headline letters. After Stella had bitten his finger, he had started feeding her blood—pig blood, cow blood, chicken blood—bought on the sly at the local market. After she had taken a swipe at his arm, he had upgraded her meals to raw ground beef and pork: meat and fat fused together sticky-red, the smell of fear and death and slaughter making him sick. But the last time he had tried to feed her, she had turned her head away from the spoon, her little face twisted in both hunger and distaste until she had swiped at him instead. He had cursed her but she still refused to eat, and had later become so hungry she had bitten her own fingers instead.
Ghosts of Infinity: and Nine More Stories of the Supernatural Page 10
