Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  A few more paces and I would reach the river. Suddenly you, my lemon grass lover, seemed so safe and distant.

  Chapter 53

  I believe in omens and so did Mamay Dulce. Dear reader, you must hear about this day of omens and ask yourself what it is you believe in. Mamay Dulce lost all her teeth in a dream. It was just a siesta dream, bizarre though it began beautifully. A love interlude of some sort about the time when she still had a waist. It was pre-war days. She was all of eighteen and wearing her favourite pink dress, a hand-me-down from a cousin, but it was well starched so it ballooned fashionably. There was a crowd of suitors below the window. She could not see their faces. They were serenading.

  Now she checks her dentures with a dry tongue. Still here, still complete.

  The dream was so clear, especially the sound, even the rustle of her dress against the sill. The suitors sang the latest English songs and they were fashionably well groomed, hair shining with some strong pomade that she almost recognised. The young Dulce tried to sing in response, as was the polite thing to do. She opened her mouth, but her front tooth broke. The crisp snap was so audible. She had to pretend that it was just a pasakalye, her musical intro, so no one would notice the peculiar disaster. She attempted the first note of a Bing Crosby ballad, but the next tooth broke as well. She kept up the necessary crooning, making sure she did not lisp and the lovers began throwing kisses, but all her teeth collapsed and she woke up, sweating.

  The sixty-year-old woman undoes her blouse to ease the tightness in her chest and rubs the scapular there. Still here, the Sacred Heart of Jesus is still here, she chuckles nervously. Aging and religion, such partners. I must be back in the fold then.

  Last week, she unearthed the holy accoutrement from the chest under her bed. And after lunch today she put it on again — after how many years? Twenty or so? She had forgotten how light it is, as if it’s not really there. But it is. Here. She rubs the scapular with her thumb again and sighs.

  Here is so quiet without her children. Eya is now in high school in the city of Rodriguez, Bolodoy lives in the sweet potato farm, and Pilar is always ‘somewhere’. Where are you off to again? There. Where’s there? Somewhere.

  I’m luckier though, Mamay Dulce assures herself, unlike the other mothers whose sons and husbands have left for the hills, ay, foolish men! But there’s no one to receive her singsong scoldings now, not in an empty house, except her eternal suitor, the gravedigger who still hovers around. Hoy, I’m not dropping dead yet, Pay Inyo!

  She runs her tongue around her mouth again, pushing at each tooth, testing whether it would give. It’s just indigestion, you get bad dreams that way. Blame Pilar for cooking those lovely snails and fern shoots with little chillies that make you sweat, in thick coconut milk, all of two coconuts, ay, how indulgent we are now. Mamay Dulce remembers the richness of the meal. You suck like you’re making a quick kiss to get the flesh out of the black spiral shells. Uhmm … fat and delicious, though a little grainy. River silt. The memory thickens her tongue. She runs to the kitchen and pours herself some water. At the first gulp, her throat shuts, refusing to swallow. She gargles loudly. The regurgitated water has no trace of teeth. But the dream was too vivid!

  Outside the window her daughter’s laundry catches her eye. Pilar is a good girl now, though she always leaves after her chores and stays away for hours, even days. She says she has found work at a hemp plantation, no, she’s never clear about the details. She’s always too tired to talk when she comes home. Ay, she’s become less argumentative, cured of her temper at last, and more solicitous. Quieter too. That girl now talks with no voice, walks with no feet, especially at dusk. It’s as if she’s settling down like the sun, but not inside. She’s so alert under the pores of her skin. She watches, her whole body watches, there’s a grim efficiency about her watching.

  Tongue fixed on her molar, Mamay Dulce returns to the bedroom to change her clothes. She can smell sweat and it’s not a good thing.

  ‘You shouldn’t be alone, Mamay. It’s not a good thing,’ Pilar says.

  ‘I’m not alone. You’re here.’

  Between them the hill of empty shells keeps growing.

  Pilar came home unexpectedly, just before eleven, with a basket of freshly gathered river snails and ferns. Mamay Dulce was in the bedroom, finishing some hemming, when she heard her rush in, straight to the kitchen. ‘To wash lunch,’ she called out. She took a long time and used up a whole jar of water. Her mother scolded her for wastefulness.

  ‘Perhaps, Bolodoy should move back here,’ Pilar says, chewing her food with great care as if for some purpose other than digestion.

  ‘He’s doing well in the farm,’ the mother defends her son.

  The other’s fist of rice rests on the table for a long time.

  ‘And don’t you pick on him again,’ the mother warns.

  Mamay Dulce was never told about the farm’s change of hands or of Bolodoy’s employment as Mayor Kiko’s tenant in the land that her family had cultivated for more than a decade.

  ‘Do you ever see him, Mamay?’

  ‘Of course. He brought me a fat eel just last week, very fresh, mind you, Bolodoy’s a good boy, so don’t — ’

  ‘He’s not a boy,’ Pilar protests.

  ‘Don’t argue.’

  A snail from one hand to the other and back, as if in a game. ‘He’s our family’s undoing,’ her daughter says, voice hoarse.

  ‘Just shut up and eat … uhmm, this is very good.’

  Pilar throws a snail at the mound of shells, they scatter around the table. She begins to giggle, hugging herself as if to contain the sudden mirth … ‘My stupid brother … ’

  ‘I said, don’t start — ’

  ‘And my ignorant mother … ’ She wants to say more, but all she can do is fill the room with tremulous ellipses.

  ‘Pilar — hoy, what’s with you?’

  She shivers, moaning her mother’s name and something about the river. She has grown so pale.

  Utterly bewildered, Dulce slaps her so the mumbling would make sense. She has never seen her like this before, never, her twenty-year-old daughter of the double puyô, those two eyes of a hurricane. Ay, she does live up to those marks on her crown.

  Chapter 54

  Here is a time when life is sweet, when it’s easy to get caught between admirable daring and futile certainty, when you know he’s the wrong man, yet you fall for him anyway, and heavily. You blame it on the season, the heady fragrances in the air. Kamya blooms, guavas, and of course jackfruits ripening in jute sacks, like masked heads smothered in their own scent. Still unplucked but certain of the impending harvest, even if blind to the world.

  ‘If I put my hand here, would you protest?’ the grey-haired baker asks.

  ‘I would, Benito, because I’d rather it were here,’ Pilar says, taking the hand off the front of her shirt and guiding it underneath.

  ‘Pilar … ’

  The palm makes slow, circular motions. She can hardly speak.

  ‘But I have a wife and child in the south.’

  ‘So you’ve told me many times.’ She feels all their clothes are an encumbrance.

  On her ear, his breath is hot with conviction. ‘I never lie … ’ He sucks the pink lobe, making little noises.

  ‘You never,’ she echoes, drowning in the smell of yeast and saliva.

  ‘I’m not too old for you, am I?’

  Mamay Dulce once said, an older man is more patient — and you, Pilar, need a very patient man.

  ‘My red chilli, my ardent revolutionary … ’ His tongue darts in and out of her ear.

  Inside the bakery more than dough is rising.

  ‘You are my first cause,’ she whispers. Benito’s lips on hers, all that she’s ever wanted.

  Two years ago she met the grey-haired mestizo at Pay Inyo’s store. He had a reckless manner about him, especially in the way he spoke against corrupt landlords in between swigs of San Miguel beer, which Pay Inyo offered for free. Th
e fair-skinned baker with the tall nose so impressed him. And her.

  She did not mean to stay and listen. She was delivering a sack of sweet potatoes from the farm. Pay Inyo and a farmer stood up, ready to help, but the baker raised his hand to stay their gallantry. ‘Don’t insult the lady’s strength.’ She blushed and felt foolish. He had a boldness that caused her breath to falter, especially when he smiled at her before his voice grew hoarse with emotion.

  ‘Tell me, how do we plant rice that will have more grains to feed our children? How do we pull a struggling fish to the banks? With hands of conviction, hands directed by a steady heart, it sits firmly in the chest, unafraid. Here!’ And he thumped his chest — and the next man’s, and the next. Everyone was transfixed. ‘Listen. Here, here!’

  Later that night Pilar repeated the motion on her own breast, and Estrella said it’s a gesture that means mea culpa, doesn’t she know? At mass, we thump our chests to invoke our deep contrition.

  ‘I’ll sleep here tonight,’ she offers, kissing Benito to silence his remonstrations against the unfairness of his advances and that one, foolish letter, only one. It was a while ago now.

  ‘I don’t want you hurt, Pilar.’

  ‘But I’ve gone this far.’

  She has been attending the secret teach-ins in his bakery. On the first night the farmers welcomed her with silent nods. No names were spoken but everyone felt like family, kindred hearts sitting unafraid in the chest, steeped in old resentments, especially the loss of land and the harrassment from the mayor’s thugs. Then Benito took her to the hills to meet the other comrades. They were uneventful meetings. In the middle of the balangubang vines and kogon grass, in a makeshift hut with nothing but a stone stove, there were five men and two women, all relaxed and friendly. One of the women offered everyone a plate of rice and dried fish. Pilar wanted to ask if it got lonely there.

  ‘This is not a love story.’ Benito turns away, hands in his pockets as if hiding them from her body. ‘This is work.’ He opens the oven door with precise, almost angry movements.

  She has never seen guns before. Instead of bread, five pistols, three one-shot derringers and two AK-47s.

  Bolodoy is showing Kiko’s foreman around the sweet potato farm. Ex-Major Ernesto de Villa is talkative and friendly, slapping the farmer’s back occasionally and calling him ‘brod’, brother.

  ‘So you live in this isolated place?’ Major Ernie asks, wetting his thick lips. Earlier he announced he’s from the city and he prefers it there. But work is here.

  ‘Here is good,’ Bolodoy replies, taking big strides to keep up with the long legs and unusually large feet, in boots. He wants to tell him to be careful with the freshly planted plots but checks himself. The man is not the type who welcomes advice.

  ‘And you don’t live with your family?’

  ‘I don’t have a family — yet,’ he emphasises the last word. At twenty-two, the young farmer is sensitive about being unmarried and never having had a girlfriend.

  ‘I mean your mother, sister … ’

  ‘Oh … ’ He stares at the tongue sweeping the lips. He imagines a toad hungry for the next dragonfly.

  The man returns the stare and whips a pack of cigarettes from under his jacket. ‘Marlboro, brod. Imported,’ he offers.

  ‘Really?’ Bolodoy is flattered by the generosity.

  ‘Hundred per cent American,’ the man says, flicking a gold lighter open. ‘I only smoke American, like the Boss-Mayor — you like him?’

  ‘He’s … okay … ’ Bolodoy notes that the man is not interested in inspecting the farm. The protuberant eyes are fixed ahead, towards the river.

  ‘You’re not — sure?’ The question is asked lazily, an apt punctuation to the smoke rings that he has just blown into the air.

  ‘Ay, that’s very clever.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’ll teach you sometime — you know, he’s your Boss-Mayor too.’

  ‘Yes,’ replies Bolodoy, coughing.

  ‘American cigarettes are very strong, brod, — now tell me, do the other farmers like the Boss-Mayor, I mean, those who farm his land?’

  ‘I don’t — ’

  ‘Iraya will be proudest when he becomes governor, you know — you think they’ll vote for him?’

  ‘I — I don’t know. I work alone.’

  ‘The Boss-Mayor and I know that. You don’t make trouble.’

  ‘I love my — his farm,’ Bolodoy mutters, eyes fixed on the conspicuous army boots.

  The foreman slaps the hunched back. ‘He knows that too, brod, he knows that very well.’ He wets his lips again and strides towards the river — to finish a job, he says.

  ‘To gather ferns and snails,’ Benito said earlier. ‘Use the basket. You can lift it, you have such strong arms. Don’t forget to pile your pickings over the gifts, keep them hidden. And never raise your head, keep down, look busy. But watch for the fisherman with a white towel around his neck. He will come in his boat. Hand the basket to him. It’s all right, Pilar, sweetheart, I’ll cover you.’

  Because her heart is light, so is the basket of smuggled ammunition.

  Then the river, still then not still, and the fisherman extending his arms, saying, ‘Thank you, you’re very kind,’ and suddenly a crack in the air then another and her brother’s voice screaming ‘Dios mio, Dios mio!’ while someone urges him to shut up, then running feet and Benito holding her down among the ferns, the silt in her mouth.

  With ferns and snails in coconut, I’ll cover you. With whispers about lunch, I’ll cover you. With your white towel, now as red as the hottest of chillies, yes, old fisherman, I’ll cover you — in your boat that’s endlessly rocking, from the air where the shots keep ringing over and over again.

  Chapter 55

  ‘Eloping in broad daylight. It’s not the custom, is it, Pay Inyo?’ Mamay Dulce’s voice is barely audible.

  The old gravedigger takes a while to respond to the query that would have made him laugh at another time. He’s trying to elbow out the anxiety from his voice. ‘With you, I’d elope under the moonlight, Dulce.’

  ‘Over lunch, she was shivering and babbling like mad, Dios ko, just a few hours ago, I thought she was ill or something.’

  ‘Pilar’s in love.’

  ‘Then you arrived with the terrible news — that poor fisherman — did you know him?’

  ‘No. They’re still trying to identify the body in town. I think a courier, the soldiers said.’ The red towel flutters behind his eyes.

  ‘She was there … when it happened.’

  ‘How could you think that?’

  ‘I just know, mothers do,’ she says, twisting the edge of her blouse. ‘She rushed out of the house after you came with the news about that poor fisherman.’

  ‘My dear Dulce … ’

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked her questions, I shouldn’t have slept after she left, I shouldn’t have dreamt … ’ Mamay Dulce imagines ferns and snails in her toothless mouth and a body blooming with red chillies.

  ‘Come now … ’ Pay Inyo tries to gather her close but she flinches. ‘All my teeth broken, ay, ay, it’s an omen, someone will die, I knew it, I dreamt it.’ She clutches her scapular. ‘And they were blowing kisses.’

  ‘Sshh … all those singers in your dream are just like Pilar — they’re just — in love.’ He’s desperate for her old temper, her magnificent rantings that might save both of them from drowning.

  ‘Ay, Madre de Dios, please save my poor daughter … ’ she whispers.

  Passionate reprimands, pinchings that left marks like flowers, and raps on the bottom with the bamboo rod, but hardly a tear for her willful daughter in all her two decades, until now.

  ‘I’m so scared … all my teeth fell out.’

  ‘Retroactive omen.’ He forces a chuckle, stroking her hand, which is quickly withdrawn.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Omen for that poor fisherman, not for your daughter,’ Pay Inyo convinces himself before this unrequit
ing love now almost in his arms.

  She is staring at the empty chest where Pilar’s clothes used to be, and the note in an unfamiliar hand.

  Sorry, Mamay Dulce. We love each other. I’ll take care of Pilar — Benito.

  Chapter 56

  I love my Iraya

  I love my Benito

  I love what he loves

  I love our people’s cause, yes I do!

  The evolution of her emphatic pledge was invoked in a fresh handspan of hair. I reached the river not long after I buried the sergeant. It had gone pitch dark but I knew the source of the water was still there before me: those three hills that she once spanned with a sweep of her arms as she danced on her laundry: ‘I lab my Iraya, yesadu!’ But love with a ‘vvveee’ this time.

  Love for our people’s cause is the greatest of them all.

  Pilar could not help herself; she was smitten. After three years of silence since she eloped with Benito, her hasty notes on the back of cigarette foils, a comics page, or on a flattened box of Vicks vapour rub emphasised that old word, our one cause of grief: love.

  I can write now. I send you all my revolutionary regards and love.

  Her pencil strokes were like timorous currents, the letters not quite as smoothly curved as the hills. I think of those hasty notes and see the last time we spoke. I hear it.

  I am meant to study for a Theology exam with my classmate Inez, but she has not turned up, so I start alone under the oldest acacia tree of the High School of the Holy Rosary. Inez and I are in our last year, and we’re very close. Since first year, we’ve sat together in all our classes, at the C desk: Inez Canlas next to Estrella Capas. She’s from the city but knows about Pilar as my bravest sister who plays the most clever tricks on all of us, who outruns and outfights all the boys in Iraya and goes hunting in the hills alone with only a machete, and brings home wild fowl to roast, ay, what a feast we have, and my tales grow taller until Pilar becomes a six-foot heroine and Inez is begging me to stop, her hands on her ears. Stop bragging about that sister of yours! But she listens. It is only Inez who listens. She is my best friend, and she’s always late. Like now, so I deal with the mysteries of the Body of Christ alone.