The Hour of Daydreams

by Renee Macalino Rutledge

  Outside the birds erupted into choruses then twittered slowly back to silence. The sun was already high, brightening the spaces between the acacia leaves. For the first time in his life, Manolo enjoyed the simple pleasure of fresh flowers around the house. Mother had never troubled herself with such frivolities. Tala gathered wildflowers each day and placed them in a pitcher at the center of the table. Today it was jasmine and bougainvillea. Such pretty colors, pink and white. He wanted to sniff the fragrance from the white blossoms, bring his face close enough to feel the petals against his cheeks. At the impulse, Manolo checked himself and grunted, pretending he had read something particularly thought provoking in the Manlapaz Bulletin.

  Before leaving for work, he would give Tala his ripped trousers to sew. He would give her money to shop and extra to buy whatever else she might need—fabric for a new dress, a new book, or something small and handmade, like a basket or a bell, that she tended to pick up simply for its beauty. Upon coming home, he would ask what she had managed to accomplish during the day. And then at night, at night . . . Manolo thought of the previous night, when his body was pressed tight against Tala’s. When he had kissed her tenderly, inch by inch and inch by inch again, his heart beating so fiercely he feared its thunder would betray that he was anything but composed. That without Tala, his heart might stop beating altogether.

  Evenings were a time of sharing for Tala and Manolo. Mother and Father took to having earlier dinners, which they ate in their bedroom. So the new husband and wife can have their privacy, they had said with secret smiles. Manolo suspected that his parents’ motives for eating separately also included an aversion to Tala’s cooking. They enjoyed her breakfasts well enough, but Manolo himself was alarmed at the way she altered traditional dishes. He wanted his adobo the way he had eaten it all his life, with the perfect balance of savory and tang. Tala’s different versions of the dish included sweet potatoes, lemon juice, tomato sauce, bell peppers, or peas. Along the way she invented new dishes, and Manolo eventually acquired a taste for them.

  As they ate, Tala recounted the walks that Manolo knew she was in the habit of taking. She described the flowers that grew along which fences, showed him the skipping stones she had found along the shallows of the riverbank, where she’d stopped to read, recounted the smells and sounds of the marketplace, the latest gossip from one of the neighborhood wives. Manolo couldn’t help but wonder whose eyes stuck fast to Tala during her wanderings. He imagined where Tala’s gazes lingered when he was not with her. He began to concoct ideas that his wife wasn’t thorough in her storytelling, purposefully omitting what she was up to in between the walks to and from home. She could have been doing anything while he puttered about among the fevered and infirm. As his imagination wandered, he became distracted on his rounds. He accidentally gave Nanang Aida acne medication for her ulcers. She sent for him the next day, wondering if she should swallow the cream or rub it on her belly. He told Tatang Rubio, a vegetarian whose ailments he had treated for years, to eat plenty of red meat in order to increase his iron levels. Manolo had always been a perfectionist. But even his recent carelessness didn’t bother him as much as his wife’s propensity to wander.

  Manolo decided to follow Tala, convincing himself it would just be this once. Pretending to leave for work one morning, he walked to the nearest sari sari store instead. He bought a pack of cigarettes and matches and returned home. Manolo was not a smoker but opened the box without thinking, as though he had done this countless times in the past, running his fingers against the circular tops before tapping out a stick. The smoke scratched harshly against his throat at first, then gradually subsided into an aching sweetness. From the windows, he could barely make out Tala’s features on the other side of the glass as she brushed Mother’s hair then tried on the jewelry Mother handed her, piece by piece. Later she stepped out of the house, still wearing a pair of Mother’s white shell earrings.

  She wore a sleeveless orange dress made from a light fabric—linen or cotton. It flowed weightlessly around her ankles, dark against her honey-toned skin, light against her long raven hair. He stayed behind at a distance, savoring each second of watching her undeterred. She was so lovely, her steps so dainty on the gravel path. Focusing on the sway of every curve, the way her hands fell at her sides, with only one arm swinging when she walked, he couldn’t help but recall the night he’d found her.

  He had come to the river by accident that night. His childhood friend had died, not from the diabetes that plagued him most of his life, but by drowning in Sabanal Bay, off the coast of Ogtong. News of this death had made Manolo quiet and lonely, not for his lost compadre, who was like a brother to Manolo, but for himself. Manolo was familiar with the face of death. It was his job to outsmart it, outrun it, for as long as he could, if not forever. At such a moment he realized he was just a pawn, an unworthy opponent in a game he could not win. Death, at any given moment, could sidestep him with unanticipated moves.

  It was after two a.m. when he had gotten the news of Palong’s drowning. The barrio, dark and sleeping, stretched long beneath the blanket of night. Familiar shapes, at that hour, assumed new identities. The contours of his roof and fence against the blackened sky seemed to defy time; he could imagine those objects of wood and concrete posing just so, centuries from that moment. Manolo did something he had never done before—he took a walk in the middle of the night, alone. He realized now that what he had been looking for was death. In the darkness, it could take him by surprise. It could jump at him from unseen corners. He had wanted to confront death. He would fight it like a man.

  Just two miles away from his house, away from the barrio, a river flowed for miles, snaking down from the ripe green mountains, irrigating field upon field, and between a grove of trees not too far from where he lived, the river was said to keep its most private secrets, like the wetness of a woman no mortal man should ever know. Superstitions of vampires, demons, bruhas, and the bewitched swarmed over the shadows across that grove, and the people of the province avoided it for their lives. That night Manolo walked through rows of rice plants, in the direction of the mountains. Toward the greedy arms of the river. And not just anywhere along its voluptuous body, but to that forbidden place of magic. He thought he heard music. As he got closer, he realized that what he heard were the voices of women. And splashing. The lowest branches surrounding the river were covered with thick white coats. They emitted a glow that surrounded the river with an otherworldly light.

  Two trees stood close enough together for Manolo to hide behind. He peeked through the teardrop-shaped arch between their trunks, at a distance from which he could hear and see the women on the river without being discovered. He couldn’t know for certain, but he assumed that they were sisters, as if the knowledge was evident just by looking at them. Seven of them—talking all at once, it seemed, and laughing. Except for one. She dunked her head into the river and disappeared beneath it, then reemerged and floated on her back. He climbed the trunks to get a closer look. She stroked the water from every angle, kissing it with her lips, talking only to the waves her body generated.

  One by one her sisters emerged from the river. Colorful nightgowns clung to their bodies, which varied from slender to round, short to tall, old to young. The youngest, about eight years old, was eager to go home. She jumped up and down, pointing to her white coat on top of a tree. Her teenage sister, who only seemed to spring into motion when someone needed her help, retrieved the coveted object and passed it to the younger girl. Soon, only the one remained in the water. It isn’t fair to make us wait, her sisters complained. Not again. You always think of yourself. Hurry up, Tala! We’ll be back tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. They would be back tomorrow night. That was when the one got out of the water and he saw that she was the most beautiful of them all. Tala. Then the seven sisters put on their coats, and Manolo realized they weren’t coats at all, but wings. A magnificent splendor of wingspans. Then a sudden surge of air—he watched them bend, each with h
er own measure of elegance, pushing up from the ground, then disappearing into the stars.

  Manolo returned night after night, climbing higher into the trees to watch Tala swim beneath him. Each night, Tala made her sisters wait a little longer, then a little longer still. Eventually, they stopped waiting for her at all. The first time Tala swam alone under the moonlight, Manolo’s heart burned. He summoned the courage to approach her in the river, but didn’t want to risk frightening her. Instead, he stole her wings and hid them away. Then Tala emerged from the river, trembling with cold with nowhere to go, and Manolo watched for hours still. When he finally revealed himself, only the river spoke its incessant babble to interrupt their silence. Tala did not feel threatened by his presence; she walked along the river’s edge without questioning him, like they were two forest animals who had navigated to the water by instinct. He left the river for a day longer, gathering the nerve to speak. On the second night, Manolo and Tala went home together, invincible against the shadows, never to part again.

  She was his wife now, he told himself. Once again, Manolo found himself hiding and watching, separated from Tala by a fragrant screen of earth-scented leaves. And he nearly sprang into the path, calling out to her with open arms. But he retreated, deeper into the barrier of foliage. Looking back on those nights by the river, Manolo realized he’d found what he had been searching for. And every day since, he’d grappled with a certain kind of death.

  2. What Lies Within

  Something about being in the marketplace felt like swimming, Tala thought. Beneath the water, everything around you echoed. And here, so much sound to swim through, dozens of voices speaking at once, amplified to the point of distortion. Then there was the current, a school here and a school there. She glided between and among the other fish.

  In truth, Tala preferred the river to this bustle and exchange of goods. But shopping for dinner was only an excuse for her true errands. She could just as easily have requested Luchie, the maid, to buy what she needed.

  Her first impulse was always to see Baitan.

  He begged on a corner where the meat and vegetable stands dwindled to a few stray carts and a row of vendors selling handicrafts spread on blankets. Where the one bus passing through Manlapaz screeched to a stop, spewing out nearby locals returning from the crowded docks and sidewalks of Tagarro Bay, Baitan stood with his basket. It would contain a few disheveled onions, a garlic bulb, a bruised orange or two—whatever he managed to steal or find among the larger stalls. Tala usually bought the entire contents of this basket, returning home with strange varieties that she always found a use for in her recipes.

  Cooking, for her, had become something of an adventure. At first, she’d felt insecure about her place in the kitchen. Even during a task as simple as cooking rice, Iolana would raise her eyebrows at her, humphing underneath her breath as Tala rinsed the debris from between the grains then measured out an extra cup of water for every cup of rice. She had to watch Iolana make rice before realizing where the criticism came from. Her mother-in-law didn’t use a measuring cup, sifting instead with her fingers through the rice immersed in water to “feel” the correct proportions. Only when Tala felt confident enough to use the same method did Iolana’s eyebrows return to normal.

  Today Baitan’s basket was filled with pistachio nuts, tamarinds, and three bananas straggled in a near-empty bunch. Tala looked at the pieces of broken shell, at the lonely looking stem, and visions of stews and desserts floated in her mind. She could substitute pistachio nuts for the peanuts that one of her recipes called for; she could mash the bananas into a creamy dessert. The tamarind she would give to Father. He liked pulling the sticky fruit from its vine-like stem and spitting the seeds into his fist. Everything in Baitan’s basket had the potential to become something more than what it appeared.

  Baitan himself was more valuable than his bare feet, skinny brown legs, and oversized T-shirt could ever signify. The little boy’s stare, direct and unrelenting, had drawn Tala toward his basket when she’d first come across him a few months before. He had looked at her then with a blaze of recognition that drew her closer.

  “You left your stall,” he had said.

  “Oh, but I shop in all the stalls, and your basket is just as good if not better.”

  She had noticed that the boy’s mother let him play once he was free of the items in the basket. So she returned again the next day.

  “Why did you leave your stall?” he asked again.

  “I have no stall, you silly little monkey.”

  He smiled. “You are even prettier today.”

  Tala returned on the third day.

  “Will you go back to your stall then, after here?” the boy asked.

  Tala felt a peculiar jolt. “Yes, boy, I will. Remind me where my stall is, and I will give you a prize.”

  The boy had led Tala directly to the center of the marketplace, to an albularyo’s booth located between two others, accessible through a little inlet that was easy to miss. Indeed, she had already missed it countless times. Like a secret room in a maze. A bare wooden plank serving as a counter guarded the stall from end to end. Behind it, a patterned ivory curtain fluttered coquettishly, weightless enough to rouse at the slightest movement, but revealing nothing of the mysteries behind it. Along the wall to the right, a row of bottles stood side by side on a low shelf, in company with two small stacks of clay bowls, silverware, candles, and a few sealed tins, all of it bedecked with flowers, petals, stems, or carved stones strewn about and among them. It smelled like a combination of coconut and mint. A single wooden chair held its place against the opposite wall, and when the woman sitting on it looked up upon their arrival, Tala met her elder sister’s eyes for the first time in nearly a year.

  “So there are two of you!” Baitan had exclaimed, glancing wide-eyed from one to the other.

  “Finally!” Dalisay had said, shooing Baitan off her counter like she would a mosquito. “You’re like a dust rag or last year’s party dress!” she said to Tala. “Right in front of you when you don’t need it, impossible to find when you’re actually looking!”

  After this encounter, Tala had learned how her sisters had wandered trying to find her, climbing gradually upward from the city sprawl, working separate stalls between them to gain ground, keeping hope steady the way only sisters could. The older sisters took turns catering to customers seven days a week from behind the wooden counter, finding all there was to know about each barrio—its gossip and scandal, its newcomers. As they sifted through the stories, they detected loneliness disguised as aching joints, read the heartache manifesting as seasonal allergies. For months they had wandered, watching and waiting for signs, moving on when no traces of Tala could be found. Until the day Tala and Baitan had appeared just like that, with Baitan pointing excitedly from one to the other. And despite all her sisterly affection, Dalisay’s first reaction had been uncontained annoyance, as if Tala needed scolding for all the trouble taken on her behalf. After this first meeting, Baitan had fallen into the habit of accompanying Tala to her sisters’ booth whenever she came to the marketplace. And Tala had found it only natural to bring him along.

  That day, she placed the pistachio nuts and bananas in her shoulder bag along with the tamarinds for Father to enjoy later. Baitan gave the empty basket back to his mother, who was weaving a flower from bamboo leaves. Tala was amazed at the way Inday translated the world out of those leaves. On a small woven blanket, she assembled crickets, fish, caribou, huts, long-stemmed flowers, men and women in mid-dance, all made from stray pieces of bamboo.

  Inday smiled up from her stool, not at her son, but at Tala. Her angel of luck, Inday called her. “I cannot keep my fingers still for a moment,” she said. “Since you’ve been visiting with Baitan, my customers have tripled! It takes a beautiful woman to invoke envy. People want what a beautiful woman has. They buy what she buys, they wear what she wears, they fall in love with her man, even if he is a worthless thug!”

  Tala laugh
ed. “If I am the beautiful woman you speak of, I suppose that would make Manolo the thug! But your formula is wrong. Can you imagine Manolo bullying the neighborhood business owners, coming to collect his cut, making threats with injections and bitter-tasting pills?”

  “Pardon me, Tala. You know you’re my angel of luck. The rest of the world is foolish. That’s all I meant. Ha, I’m sure your husband is nothing less than a saint! Stop fidgeting so, Baitan. You can take him off my hands for as long as you please; only luck can come his way with you, I’m sure.”

  “What’s luckier than magic? You make magic with your hands. You make stories out of grass, what others only step on. You make your own luck, Inday.”

  Tala and Baitan walked on, hand in hand. They took to each other like siblings. Baitan became the little brother Tala had never had. With a family of sisters, she had grown accustomed to the wild energy of girls, each demanding her own way, her own orbit to circle an insistent gravitational pull. But Baitan seemed to revolve around her, a little lost planet confusing her for a sun. She would give him whatever light she could, anticipating the day he would outgrow her to make his own brightness.

  Each evening, as she recounted her adventures over dinner, Tala yearned to tell Manolo about her family beyond their walls. But she was no fool. She’d come to learn Manolo’s ways, his preference for privacy, his possessiveness over their life together. Loud and crowded parties, new faces he could neither place nor trust were a nuisance to Manolo. It was endearing to know how well he treasured her, and she shared his relish for a quiet life, the thunderous way it could open one’s heart to the sound of rain and the slow, rhythmical pulse of each day’s existence. But she allowed herself a bigger sphere to wander than he might have wanted for himself.