The Difficult Loves of Maria Makiling

by Wayne Santos

  It was magic and electricity and a warm blanket and gooey chocolate all at the same time, and it just cemented to Maria that yes, this was real. She totally fucking loved Tate.

  And while there was certainty in her heart, she was considerably less confident about her vision.

  Three people stood in the trees. That in itself wasn’t so unusual, but they were staring at her with the intensity of a drill bearing down on a piece of wood. They were robed in brown, hooded, and Maria’s first instinct was to assume they were Carmelite monks, except of course, that there would be absolutely no good reason for Carmelite monks to be hanging out in Toronto watching people make out in parks. One of the people was a young woman.

  They all looked Asian. To Maria’s eyes, they even looked distinctly Filipino, with brown skin, less pointed noses.

  The young woman stared, without blinking, then raised her hand and knocked on a nearby tree. A loud, wooden rap echoed, like someone at the door.

  Maria pulled back from Tate, frowning. The robed figures were moving off, disappearing back into the bush, and doing it without making any apparent sound: no snapping of twigs, or swinging of branches or rustling of leaves.

  “Did you see that?” Maria asked him.

  “See what?”

  “The creepy monk people?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hear anything? Like someone knocking on a door?”

  “No.”

  That was not good. “Do I need counseling? Or maybe anti-psychotics?”

  “Is that what you just saw and heard?”

  She nodded. Maybe Aurelio and Mateo were psychos, attracted to her because she was a psycho too? Was this a birds-of-a-feather thing? Suddenly the forest and the sunlight and Tate weren’t so reassuring. That feeling of being cornered and hunted had come back, and she didn’t even know why. But she recognized the fear when it came bubbling up from the bottom of her heart. It was the same fear that had been there, like a knife made of ice stabbing her in the chest when she’d realized yesterday that Tate was the one. And now the disappearing monks had triggered it again.

  “Maybe we should leave,” Maria said. She forged on ahead, making for the exit from the valley, to get back into the buildings, the people, the abundance of smartphones people could whip out and take incriminating videos with that could later be used in court as evidence against assault and harassment. She very badly wanted that kind of insurance now, for reasons she couldn’t even explain.

  She thought about the monks, just standing there, watching, and a word, unbidden, drifted up from the shadowy depths of her mind.

  “Does ‘Kumakatok’ mean anything to you?” she asked.

  “I thought you said you didn’t know any Tagalog or Filipino cultural stuff.”

  Goosebumps dimpled on her arms. “Why? Is that what that word is?”

  “It’s a name, I think.” He laughed behind her, and she turned to look at him but kept their pace up, she just wanted to get out of here. “I think it might actually have something to do with what you said you just saw, about creepy monks. Maybe you read it somewhere?”

  “So you know what it is?”

  “I think so. My mom might have mentioned it to me. Or maybe it was my grandparents. I know it has something to do with the Philippines anyway. Really surprised you even knew that name. And your pronunciation was bang on. I’d have to think about this a little, I know someone told me about this…”

  His musings turned into subvocalized grunts as he hemmed and hawed his way through his childhood memories. Or so Maria presumed. He was a bit of a puzzle to her in a lot of ways, which, she supposed, was one of the reasons she’d been drawn to him. He wasn’t what anyone would call an alpha male, at least not in the ambitious, fuck-people-over-to-get-ahead department. The first time she’d met him, he’d been giving a cupcake from the café to a little boy wailing about having been separated from his mom. And unlike Maria herself, who had full, red-blooded Filipino parents, he had far more interest in the archipelago on the other side of the planet than she ever had. For her, the Philippines had just been someplace with a parade of dictatorial leaders that her parents clucked about, thanking the fates that Canadian immigration had let them escape the cycle of revolution and oppression.

  For Tate, the islands meant something else, and the language was alive to him. It was a heritage that he had been separated from, not one that he’d escaped. Even his English contained just the barest hint of the Tagalog accent, which was something that Maria herself had shed almost completely by the time she was four or five and talking with other kids in school.

  She wondered now if avoiding her cultural background had really been such a great idea. It seemed kind of silly, here, in Canada, especially growing up in Grande Prairie, in one of the whitest provinces in the country, to cling to Filipino-ness. To let it complicate things, add unnecessary texture to her daily life. More than silly: there had been a very real reluctance to embrace her background. Almost an anxiety.

  They made their way up the path that led back to downtown Toronto. The streetlights loomed in the distance, tall, metallic, and uncaring. The noises of traffic grew as well, the sounds of horns mingling with the rumble of expensive sports cars idling at traffic lights and throbbing subwoofers shaking windows.

  “Oh, I think I remember now where I’ve heard that word from, Kumakatok,” Tate said as they got closer to the street. “It was my godmother, I think.”

  They got to the street corner and waited for the light to change. It was a lovely day. It should have felt like it. The sun was still out, mothers were pushing their babies around in strollers that cost more than a weeklong vacation in Paris, and there were at least three different languages being spoken at the same time from different groups of people as they walked down to the boutique shops, cafés, and bakeries that marked the beginning of the Annex. And yet now, she felt dread. She felt dread and love in equal measure, a kind of desperate love that she wanted to smother Tate in, and she didn’t know why.

  “So, what did your godmother say?”

  “It’s some kind of omen,” Tate said. “Folklore stuff, I guess. There are these spirits of death. Well, not death, exactly, but harbingers.”

  “Uh-huh.” Alarms sounded in Maria’s head. Huge, whopping, ringing ones.

  “They hang by a place where someone’s about to die, and they warn everyone that death is coming by knocking on the door. So, really bad news, I guess.”

  Maria went rigid. Then she recovered herself and tried to relax.

  “Whoa, are you okay?”

  “No. Not at all.” The light changed, and they crossed the street. “And it’s supposed to be three people?”

  “Yeah, two guys and a girl. In these big robes, like monks. Just like what you saw…”

  She tugged on Tate and walked faster. Out of the periphery of her vision, she glimpsed an SUV rushing into a left turn. Right at them.

  Oh, fuck…

  She noticed three things at the same time, in a moment that seemed to stretch out for Maria into one, never-ending ribbon of fear.

  First, the SUV changed, for just an instant in her vision, into something bigger and gaudier. A big, psychedelic bus with its windows ripped away, and the rear left open.

  Jeepney, some distant childhood recollection told her, with its Jesus hood ornament wearing a red cape like Superman and carrying a gun like Rambo.

  Second, the person driving the vehicle wasn’t really driving. The man’s hands were thrown up, batting at something that dug into his neck with one arm—some kind of fucked-up, beady-eyed dwarf, complete with pointy hat—and the dwarf was steering the SUV/Jeepney thing directly at them.

  Thirdly, that Tate was already moving, getting ready to push her out of the way and make sure she was safe. That’s when Maria realized that her dread, her love, the Kumakatok, none of this was about her at all.

  It was about Tate.

  She screamed, “Not again!”

  Maria Malihan stopped
existing at that moment, replaced by something old, something terrified, which had completely shed any sense of self-preservation. He was going to die. Again. And she had been helpless to prevent it. Again.

  Her mortal limbs reacted. Slowly, too slowly. Ignoring the stunned look on Tate’s face as she resisted his effort to push her out of the way of the oncoming whatever-it-was, and she pushed back, trying to get him out of the way. Anything had to be better than losing him again; she couldn’t keep doing this, she could already feel another hole in her heart opening to make room for the yawning pain of yet another of his deaths, and the grief that would add to her landscape of failures.

  For a single, brief instant, she saw him move back and allowed herself the faint hope that this might be it. Maybe he was going to get out of the way, and things would be different. She would save him.

  But the ridiculous dwarf, clinging to the driver, forced a swerve that put the car back on course to hit Tate. Maria couldn’t avoid it, not completely, but it was going to glance off her now.

  The tear was already streaking down the side of her face when the car, now looking like an ordinary SUV again, slammed into her hip and flung her several feet away. It hit Tate dead center and took him with it, as it left the road and ploughed into a streetlight, pinning him.

  Maria shut her eyes and howled. Pain flared through her entire right side, where the car had hit her; through the back of her head, where she’d fallen on the asphalt; through the thing inside her that was the dawning realization there had been a terrible accident, and the man she’d fallen in love with had been smeared in just another Toronto traffic accident.

  Happens every day. But it was happening to her right now.

  She rolled on her side and opened her eyes. The onlookers had splintered into three groups. One group rushed to the car, and her crushed boyfriend. Another group ran towards her, phones raised, filming the carnage. A third group tried to look shocked while at the same time sidling up to an older woman with long, gray curly hair who looked both horrified and familiar. They were all telling her how terrible this was while asking for her autograph or taking selfies with her.

  “Margaret Atwood’s seen an accident!” someone shouted. And people swarmed around her.

  And the world drowned in darkness and photos and comments for social media. Maria’s last thought as she lost consciousness was hoping someone remembered to call 911.

  Chapter Four

  SELF-ACTUALIZATION OR A REASONABLE FACSIMILE

  WHEN MARIA WOKE, it was to a strange ceiling, the sensation of unfamiliar material against her skin, and an antiseptic smell in the air.

  It took her a few seconds to assemble a reasonable picture of herself and what had happened to her. Gradually, the memories broke into her awareness with the same force as the car crash that had put her here. A hospital. She was in a hospital. And she was here because of Tate.

  At the thought of him, her mind became a hot, white scream.

  She pulled herself out of bed. She wasn’t even sure why she was here; her body seemed fine. She didn’t even feel any pain until she moved her arm and realized there was an IV stuck to it. Then she gave it more thought and looked down at herself. Yup, she was in a hospital gown. How long had she been here?

  Tate. Tate, Tate, Tate…

  The panic launched her out of the room. She looked to her left, her right, and then put her hand behind her, trying to hold the opening of the hospital gown shut as she made her way to the reception desk. The nurse at the desk took one look at her, bugged out her eyes and stood up, lips already forming a loud No—

  “I didn’t come alone, there was someone else,” she said to the nurse. “Where is he? Is he all right?”

  “You should not be up and about in your condition,” the nurse insisted, a Filipina, judging by her look and accent.

  “Why? I don’t have a condition.”

  The nurse looked her up and down, her eyes widened, and she said something in Tagalog, running her hand down Maria’s arm.

  Maria flushed a hot red. “I… I don’t understand what you’re saying. English?”

  The nurse crossed her eyebrows, but it wasn’t a frown, or not an angry one. “I don’t understand how this is possible,” she said in English. “You had multiple fractures up and down your body when you were brought in.”

  “When was that?”

  “A couple of hours ago.”

  “And Tate? How is he?”

  “He’s the one you came in with?”

  Frantic nodding. “My boyfriend. Is he okay?”

  “Let’s get you back to your bed. The doctors need to see this.”

  Maria felt the world drop out from under her. A high pitched whine filled her ears. If he were fine, she would have just said so. If he were a little bruised, she would have just said so. If the nurse wasn’t willing to talk about his condition at all when asked point blank like that…

  “No,” Maria whispered. “No. No, don’t tell me that. Don’t tell me that. I pushed him. I pushed him out of the way, it hit me. The car hit me.”

  “We need to get you back in your room.”

  “I need to see him. He’s my one. He’s my everything.” She reached out and held the nurse’s hand. “Don’t do this to me, please. Don’t let me not know. He’s mine. I’m his. And you have me so scared right now… Is he at least alive?” The tear was hot, streaking down her cheek. “Please tell me he’s at least alive.”

  The nurse bit her lip. “For now.”

  A cry wrenched itself from Maria’s throat that she didn’t even recognize as her own voice. It was like a wounded animal. She fell to her knees, the tiles cool and solid under her legs. It was the only thing that felt solid right now; everything else had dropped away from her. And she could see it on the horizon of her heart, that horrible, strangely familiar fear, now coming to envelop her, surround her, live in her, and never leave her alone again.

  “Let me see him,” she said, in her broken, jagged voice. She hoped this wasn’t going to be the way she sounded from now on. “Please. Just let me at least see him, and I’ll go back.” Please don’t be in surgery, pleasepleaseplease don’t be cut open…

  The nurse kneeled down and put her hands on Maria’s shoulders. “You really love him, don’t you?”

  Maria nodded so hard she thought her head might fall off.

  “Come with me,” the nurse said in a softer tone.

  “Thank you. Oh, thank fuck, thank you,” Maria said.

  The nurse arched a brow at her language, but otherwise rose up and motioned to follow her.

  Maria stood up and grabbed at the rear of her gown. People were peeking out of the rooms now, including some other nurses, but they deferred when they saw some hand signals from the Filipina leading Maria down the hall.

  The nurse stopped and opened one door, holding it for Maria to look inside.

  Tate was broken. Broken in so many ways that it was clear he could never be put back together, not the way he had been. And unlike Maria’s room, here, she heard the steady beep of a vital signs monitor and saw the tell-tale line snaking across a display. He had things in his veins and on his mouth. He looked like he’d lost a fight with a giant California redwood.

  The vital signs monitor continued to beep, an alarming, unsteady rhythm with no stability to it.

  “Is he…? Will he…?”

  “It’s hard to say,” the nurse replied. “Bahala na si Batman.”

  She almost smiled at that. She remembered her cousins saying that. Although why Filipinos had decided that Batman was the higher power they were going to entrust the fates to was something no one could explain to her.

  “What happened to the dw… the driver?” She had nearly said dwarf, which confused her until more pieces of memory bound themselves together.

  “In another hospital,” the nurse said. “He tried to hit and run, but only made it around the corner. Went off road and hit a storefront. The police showed up earlier than the ambulance to treat h
im. He’s being charged, don’t worry.” The nurse put her hand on Maria’s shoulders. “They got him. He’s not getting away with it.”

  “He’s saying it’s not his fault, isn’t he?”

  The nurse rolled her eyes. “Hay naku, what else is he going to say?”

  But he didn’t do it, Maria realized. At least, an insane, not-in-any-way-logical, deeply instinctive part of her knew it wasn’t the man behind the wheel that had done this to her, and to Tate. It had been that fucked-up little dwarf with the googly eyes and pointy hat and bizarrely brown complexion. And that dwarf had interests that went far beyond making cookies or digging jewels out of mines.

  Tate stirred; an alarming, wet, phlegmy cough bubbled out of his throat, and he whispered, “Maria?”

  The rhythm of his vitals changed, becoming even more erratic.

  The nurse hissed, her grip on Maria’s shoulder tightening for a second before releasing and moving to the bed.

  “Get out.”

  Maria’s heart battered her chest. “Tate? Tate, baby, wh—”

  “Get out,” the nurse repeated. Tate’s vitals were like a ping pong game now, fast, slow, faster still, flattening, spiking... the nurse had already pressed the call button, and was moving to look over Tate.

  “No,” Maria whispered.

  “It’s going to be ‘yes’ if you don’t get out of here. Someone’s coming, you have to get out of the way now.”

  “He’s going to die.”

  “He is if we don’t get to work on him.”

  But Maria wasn’t talking about getting the doctors, hitting him with a defibrillator, pounding his chest, or stabbing him with some huge fucking needle with adrenaline. Tate was going to die because something was making sure he was going to die. Her fear, and her love, and something else—something old, and powerful and familiar, deep inside of her—were sure of it.

  A doctor and another nurse burst in, nearly knocking Maria off her feet. The doctor, sporting the most luscious dreads Maria had ever seen, whirled on the Filipina nurse and said, in a lilting Caribbean accent, “Clear this room.” Then she turned to Tate and worked with the other nurse to restrain him.