The Hour of Daydreams

by Renee Macalino Rutledge

  Tala was lost in clouds that swirled throughout the interior of the bowl, in a familiar, soothing weightlessness. The clouds moved, parting for her underwater visions. A dream of colorful nightgowns and women splashing. A beautiful tree with no leaves. A mama who is not me, pointing at the branches, telling her to look, telling her to run. Manolo’s face in the water. She felt the urge to dive in but was fastened to the ground.

  And he saw the feathers falling from the sky like snow, his father pointing at the feathers, telling him to open his heart and look. He saw the maid sweeping away the feathers, his mother stroking the last from the ground with the tip of a finger. He understood the feathers were from Tala’s wings, that Tala was gone.

  She saw the little girl standing, so beautiful, so immensely beautiful, rooted to the ground, getting smaller and smaller, swallowed by a whirlpool she had no strength to control. She saw the little girl disappear, and her universe with her.

  I passed a hand over the bowl to stop their meanderings. Others who knew only water asked those like me to look in for them, so that I could catch traces, mere reflections of their own eyes gazing. My daughter and her husband saw for themselves, without recognizing their own capacity. They’d already dismissed what they’d seen, looking to me for more.

  Their visions had shown me more than I could ever show them. I mourned the waves already in motion against them. At the current they fought and the momentum it had gained. At the direction they’d chosen to swim. This losing struggle hurt me more, much more than her blindness to me.

  I told her she was with child. My knowledge of this revelation pleased her, though a stranger could have guessed at the melon-sized bulge at her middle. I wished I could place my ear against her stomach, hear the drumbeat, listen to the spirit’s rhythm. She wanted to know more. Her visions had shown me that the child would be a girl; I told her what I’d seen. She nodded eagerly, saying she’d known it all along. Her eyes grew larger as she touched her belly with affection. I reached into my pocket to give her a present—a barrette in the shape of a star. I told her it was for her daughter to wear, that it belonged to my daughter Ligaya, who would’ve wanted her to have it. She was content.

  I turned to him. You thought you’d know me, I said, but you don’t. She does not think she knows me, but she does. I turned to her and winked. He did not enjoy the game. I thought up clichés: accept things as they are, nothing’s perfect, love conquers all. She smiled at each. I was proud of her, after all.

  He stared. I stared back. He needed another. Forgiveness, I said, must start with one’s self. His stare slackened.

  It would have to be enough, for another fork in the water’s path beckoned. Perhaps they, too, can help me, I said. I promised a free session in return for their indulgence. I described a jewelry box. In sum, it was one-of-a-kind, blood red in hue, an antique, with a key to lock its hidden treasures. A tragic loss. Did they happen to know of a good place to find one like it? He looked down. I chatted about our own personal possessions, the way they felt so very important, that this thing I’d lost contained the impossible to replace. But that I had to try. I asked them to forgive my dramatics, adding that if my own box fell into the wrong hands, it would feel like all mayhem breaking loose. I gazed at him intently, forcing him to look up, meet my eyes, and know this was no frivolity. The box could have the answer to many things, I added.

  She told me she would give me one of her jewelry boxes to help me feel better. He had nothing to add. I thanked her for the gesture, insisting that she need not bother and offering her another trinket in return for her kindness. It was a gold-colored chain, with a heart-shaped pendant dangling from the links. I let my hands linger upon hers as I transferred the possession. I told her one day, she would remember who it came from. She would never forget, she said, she would never forget. But even the best of dreams can be forgotten like mist. The best of reality forsaken. And the most simple albularyo mistaken for a madwoman.

  No room existed for us there, not anymore.

  Part II

  13. Playing at Life

  Within twenty-four hours, news of her brother’s arrival had traveled from storefronts to kitchen tables to the steps of the square, and finally to the Lualhati home. He had asked after Tala at the fish market, the convenience store, the bus stop, the fabric stall—a tallish, lanky man who chain-smoked and reeked of stale beer, though he was never seen holding a bottle in his hand. The store owners, bus driver, shoppers, and afternoon amblers wondered aloud about this suspicious stranger, gossiping among one another after he had sauntered off, and once at home, they told their wives, husbands, sisters, or neighbors of the out-of-towner who looked something like the vampires portrayed on television, sickly and somber, but also intriguing, in a sinister sort of way.

  They weren’t afraid of him. What they felt was more like a morbid curiosity. Gossiping led to worry about the stranger’s appearance, like that of someone up to no good, lurking around with no effort toward camaraderie, and sometimes, it circled back to his relationship to Tala, a reminder or a signal that she, too, was something of a mystery to them all, with a shady background that was finally catching up to her.

  After their return from Tagarro Bay, Tala had felt aloof from the charms of the country, with its protective mountains, suspicious of lofty dreams, and the simple people with nothing to hide but always on the alert for another’s secrets. It had taken her longer than usual to settle in to a routine, with most of her preoccupations revolving around the pregnancy, and once Manolo had learned of her condition, they dreamed of the baby together, imagining the weight of that bundle in their arms, brainstorming potential names, and already thinking of stocking shelves with diapers, angel-scented lotions, and neatly folded rows of clothing the size of a doll.

  From this place of wonder and possessiveness of the future, news of her brother was a jolt from complacency, unwelcome, but necessary. She had been expecting him to come all along, and the dread of waiting was finally over. Up until recently she had never spoken her brother’s name, nor of the dark apartment beside the alleys where she’d guarded her nose against the stench of days-old garbage and fresh urine. Since the instant she’d heard news of Charo, the walls rose up before her, a labyrinth of streets filled with people walking in every direction, all of them on a journey toward the center, where the meaning of all those intersections promised revelation, but more often than not, its realization was lost on some detour—a congested highway, with foot peddlers weaving through traffic; a stuffy bar, where another drink sufficed for the answer to the riddle; a fifteen-hour job, through which the journey was forgotten, a little more each day.

  She revisited the dilapidated apartment within those rising walls, where her mother lay in the dark, immersed in the past, more and more forgetful of her health and her children each day. Her brother was the one who’d come home with the smell of cigarettes on his clothes and breath like gasoline fumes, who brought her to the bars to teach her lessons in life, of kitchen spills to clean and vomit to smear off the hallway floor, then, in the locked-up room with the six other girls, of carnal secrets, how to please or be crushed by another’s pleasure, all the while remaining a virgin, with the highest price on her unspoiled sex.

  Manolo had always believed Tala kept her silence about the past out of necessity, that she couldn’t admit to being anything but ordinary, just as he was ordinary and their life together equally so. She crumpled her silhouette to fit the shape of a provincial wife with nothing spectacular gleaming from a distant time. Father had always warned him, “Be prepared to accept accountability for your past. It is bound to catch up with you.” As a boy, he equated this with telling lies. If he lied about doing well on a test, finishing his dinner, or the places he visited with Palong, the lie would always catch up with him. So he learned to choose truth—or silence. He’d seen Tala, plastered his eyes to her like a child seeing color for the first time. Tala, with her six sisters, returning to the river night after night, departing in fl
ights to the stars that had made him shrink with wonder. He’d chosen silence in regard to those visions, respecting in turn her silence about an existence before she called Manlapaz home. Could this existence have included a brother?

  It took him days to summon enough courage—to drag aside the dusty overstuffed boxes in the closet, untouched for over a year, and reopen the hole in the back of the clinic wall. One night he’d had a dream, when he’d gone to that closet and torn it open once and for all. But fighting to reach the closet, he could hardly walk; each step demanded all his strength and will, yet the effort and sweat took him nowhere. He grabbed the walls for support along the way, pulling, dragging himself forward. At times, his legs felt numb, frozen, so that every movement seemed in vain. At other times, he could manage a shuffle, but even that required a flurry of movement that rewarded him with mere inches. By some strength of resolve, he brought himself into the clinic, not by walking, but by willing the distance to disappear. He whipped the closet door open, only to be blinded by an overpowering flash of light, flooding the room with too much brightness. The light burned through his eyes and set his cells on fire—he stumbled about in darkness and pain, reaching with helpless hands and knocking down his bookshelf and medical tray. He sought escape, freedom, relief, fumbling from the room through gaping space, more hopelessly than before.

  When Manolo woke from this dream, his vision did not return. He blinked in darkness and screamed. By the time his mother came rushing to his side, where a groggy Tala sat up, attempting to soothe him, his eyesight had come back. Manolo got up immediately then, heading straight to his clinic and locking the door behind him, knowing his mother would be listening through it. After loosening some old nails and wrenching half of a stubborn board free, he looked but saw nothing but darkness through the crack. He reached in with one arm and moved his hand in the spaces behind the closet wall. The air within was cold and drafty, the surfaces he touched rough and uneven—until his fingers collided with a weightless, silky mass. Feathers, surely. A wing here . . . yes, and another beneath. And as yet, their softness! They existed there—still—and if light had a smell, that was the magic that escaped toward him then, without form, but with essence so bright it defied walls. He covered up the wall with the cracked board, knowing his work was messy and impatient. From there, brother or no brother, he would not doubt.

  This brother hadn’t shown up around the house since their return from Tagarro Bay. The old ones would know if he had, so faithful was their vigilance at the front window. Manolo wondered if perhaps he had decided to disappear for good, but Tala was sure he’d return, and then all their questions would be answered.

  After dinner one evening, the darkness outside began to gather, and his parents retreated to the comfort of their bedroom. Luchie had left for home some hours before, taking along her red shopping cart stuffed with bags and her happy disdain. Tala and Manolo relaxed in the living room alone, their bellies full and their minds preoccupied. Around them, the house was orderly, too much so, with books stacked by a lamp on a corner table, the cushion on the rocking chair fluffed and faintly stained, the counters dusted and the slippers by the door lined up in a row.

  He asked her why she no longer placed fresh flowers in pitchers around the house. Why she’d stopped walking the nearby paths or going to the market to shop and visit with the boy, Baitan, whom she’d recently spoken of in more detail. She had been occupying the majority of her days indoors, sewing blankets, bibs, and dresses for the baby. All of it was detailed with flowers, butterflies, or feminine colors. In Tagarro Bay, she’d been titillated by the bright cloth and exotic patterns from India, central Asia, and South America. Her latest creation was a basic dress with matching kerchief, patterned with pink elephants and diamonds against a deep, emerald green, inlaid with barely-visible flowers sewn in the same color as the background of the fabric. All that time and effort would be wasted, he’d told her, if they were to have a boy. But she insisted that she could feel the brush of long lashes against her womb, the tickle of soft hair, already grown thick, and the press of full, pink lips that could only belong to a girl.

  She suggested walking that moment, when the sun had just retreated but the weather would still be hot enough to make them sweat. So they wandered, out of the house to wherever their footsteps led them. She wore the same dress she’d had on all day, with her slippers on over slightly dusty feet and her hair tied back to reveal a delicate pair of seashell earrings that had cost next to nothing. He observed her plainness in aspect, thinking her in league with the flower or the pearl, itself a thing of beauty that adornment with makeup or expensive clothing would only change, but not improve. And then her walk, the slightest bit hunched, only one arm swinging, somewhat awkward and off balance but ever youthful.

  They contemplated walking in the direction of town to a little bar on the outskirts of the farmhouses, where they could order specialty cocktails, loosen up to some music, and share friendly conversation with familiar locals, but both preferred the opposite route, to mountain and trees and solitude, even if just for an hour before bed.

  They found the river, its conspiratorial babble low to the ground, excitable and eerie, rising up in vapors that filled the overgrown nook where they’d met with the smell of dampness. At first they sat on the stone that resembled a bench with no legs, remembering how they’d done so not so many years before. “Did you lose something?” he asked with a sly smile on his face, and reposing this question, the first he’d ever asked her, led to a new way of remembering their earliest days. It was an avenue back to a beginning, even a beginning of their own invention. So they began to invent.

  First they played exile, becoming two escapees from a former homeland that had cast them away as rebels. They pretended that the shore of pebbles by the river was their new beginning, an attempt to redefine home, with only each other to envision what that place might be. In jest, he stood on the rock and begged her forgiveness for stripping her of everything she once knew, and she pushed him from that platform, claiming herself as the mastermind, and him as the follower, until they wrestled into the water, tangled in embrace, wet and fully dressed, laughing at their silly game.

  They played pioneer. The first explorers in a new land, drawn together to possibility. He reached down to inspect the virgin sand, feeling its texture and potential, trying not to laugh as he invented the names of the vegetables they would grow. At this, she brought him foliage from the trees with exaggerated seriousness, and they sniffed the leaves to guess the type of fruit it would later bear. Definitions along this shore did not exist, and they would not create them, the very thing they’d come to escape. The way of living here would simply come to pass each day, like a polite introduction, so that in another era, these ways could just as easily excuse themselves to make room for others. As they played pioneers turned philosophers, they used the long, flat stone as a pillow and looked up at the stars. Then he touched her round belly and she remembered what she never forgot. She felt happy to be out of the house, here by this river, anywhere, with her husband beside her, the same husband with whom she laughed and played and fought. The layers of complexity around them, the shadows and shapes and their meanings that stripped simplicity of itself—all of this fell away as they dreamed of the wide-open world their daughter would grow up in.

  Then the onset of weariness threatened, and they agreed to play just one more game. They would be ghosts. They could’ve gone anywhere with the idea, they agreed it was the perfect blank slate and the silliest notion yet and they couldn’t remember which of them thought of it first. And maybe it was because the depth of quiet had slowly trickled in to engulf them or the thought of being out so late made them lonely for home, but before they even started to pretend, his stomach felt uneasy, and she knew it wasn’t the cool fabric of a still-wet dress against her skin that made her begin to shiver. They recalled simultaneously how that part of the river was believed to be haunted—the superstition had been deeply ingrained in the r
egion for decades—so powerfully that no one ever dared to wander there. Except for them. Perhaps they were just apparitions, clinging one to the other, playing at life.

  “Manolo, let’s go home.”

  Glimpsing up at the treetops, he envisioned himself propped up on those branches without her knowing. He felt the guilt pulse through him for a brief undulation of time, but the joy of walking home with her far outweighed the threat of past actions and their repercussions. Besides, they had bigger problems now, as vast as the city of Tagarro Bay and all its untold stories.

  “Let’s go.”

  As they walked they heard a rustle, then another—footsteps not their own. Something approached, whistling lightly and weaving through the thickness of trees. They froze together as it took form, their heartbeats clamoring in their throats—he couldn’t believe all the wives’ tales could be true. But some skeletal figure, then a face and dark, deep-set eyes manifested before them—an actual ghost, no, a bal-bal and eater of the dead.

  His wife unthawed beside him.

  “Charo,” she said, taking no step forward or back.

  14. They Disappear

  All rituals are broken, even those of the ages. Continents change their shape; the moon inspires peace, then bloodshed, then love beneath its glow. A people with many gods, like Malakas of strength, Maganda of beauty, and Bathala above them both, forgets their idols, depleting them of strength, raising up crosses to a new divinity. A husband and a wife turn away from their vows, abandoning their marital bed, each losing the taste for the other’s body. Even animals will stray from centuries of instinct, leading to the end of their species or the evolution of a new breed.