When the Elephants Dance (28 page)

“Feliciano, nephew.” Only Aling Anna gets up. Feliciano moves away from her.

Domingo has his back turned as Ate Lorna bandages him. He smiles at first when he sees me, but the smile melts when he sees Feliciano. “Isabelle, what have you done? He is a Makapili, a Japanese sympathizer.”

Before I can explain, Domingo takes out a knife and lunges for Feliciano. Feliciano kicks out at him, and they are wrestling on the ground, stumbling over the others. Feliciano is not injured, and he has the advantage.

“Stop them, Ma!” I shout, but neither Mang Ped nor my mother can tear the two of them apart. Mang Selso will not help; he would be happy if they killed each other. Feliciano shoves Domingo away, and I run and stand in front of Feliciano, though he tries to push me aside.

“Isabelle, move,” Feliciano orders.

I steel myself as Domingo approaches. My conscience screams at me,
You have become Feliciano’s defender!

“Do not hide behind a woman’s skirts, traitor,” Domingo says.

“You are the one who hides.” Feliciano moves from behind me, and I run forward and embrace Domingo.

“Stop it, please. He saved my life. I was raped. He helped me to escape.”

There it is, I have said it. My chest hardens with the pain of my words. I shove the feeling back down. I cannot let it out. It is too hurtful. Too big, it would kill me. The room has grown quiet. All that can be heard is Feliciano’s and Domingo’s breathing. I feel the room swing sideways.

I
SLEEP FOR
hours, I know, because I hear the voices drift in and out; I hear the rain, muffled as it pelts our house above. I am conscious of the stifling heat inside the cellar. When I wake, Mother is wiping my face with a cool rag.

“Ate, ate,”
Roderick asks, holding my hand, “are you all right? Feliciano caught you when you fainted.” He gestures with his chin toward Feliciano, seated against the opposite wall. He sits separate from the rest. He and Domingo have come to a truce for the moment. They avoid each other’s eyes, their jaws tight.

“Good thing you did not
umpóg
your head on the floor.” Aling Anna
frowns. “Imagine, staying strong, only to become weak at the last minute,” she chides. “Have some tea. This is good tea, the finest. You will never have such tea again. I brought it from my house.”

A cup of tea is handed to me. I sit up slowly. She is right, the tea is exquisite, but maybe any tea would taste this way after two days without proper water. My throat constricts as soon as the liquid touches it.

“Here, comb your hair.” Aling Anna holds out a pearl-inlaid comb with three etched flowers on the handle and in the center of each a ruby. “A lady, especially a young woman, should always be properly dressed.” She looks at my clothes with apparent disdain. “And if not the clothes, then at least in her appearance. She must make do with what she has to appear presentable. That way a potential husband can still find it easy to gaze upon her.” She emphasizes the words
potential husband
and inclines her head toward Feliciano.

I take the comb from her hand. It is heavy, and my hand dips down at the weight. I comb my hair and pull a few loose strands from her comb before presenting it back to Aling Anna.

She shoos away my offering with a wave. “You keep it now, it is yours. A young woman should always have beautiful things.” She avoids Mang Selso’s eyes, then adds more gruffly, “I did not know your hair was so dirty.” She and Mang Selso bicker constantly about her riches, but Aling Anna has always taken a liking to me. As if she were a favorite aunt or godmother. She is not the same with my brothers, a little more tough with them.

I look at my mother uncertainly. She smiles and raises her chin to say,
Keep it
.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

Feliciano is watching me. I feel his eyes, and I turn to him. He turns away with a troubled look. Domingo has caught our exchange. He studies me, then Feliciano, and I feel his anger building again. He sits with his back against the wall and his hands dangling over his knees; he clenches and unclenches his fists. He stares at Feliciano until finally Feliciano meets his gaze. I try to think of words to break their connection.

“Domingo, I was worried that I would not return in time to help you. How did you manage to get here?” I ask.

Domingo’s face softens slightly. “You were a great help, Isabelle. I managed to stumble forward, hiding and resting from tree to cemetery to banana grove, until I caught up with an old man who was in possession of a wagon. He was carrying the bodies of his family, pulled forward by a skeleton of a mare. I asked him if I could ride along with him, but I don’t think he even heard me. His face was a mask of shock. So I simply climbed on and lay with the bodies
of his wife and sons, praying that no soldiers would see us and check. If not for you and that old man, I might have died.”

Domingo stands abruptly. “But I have rested enough. I will go in search of my son and Alejandro.”

It is only then that I realize my brother and Domingo’s son are not with us. Nor is Papa or Roman. “Where are they, Ma? Where is Papa?”

No one answers.

Mama struggles, then looks at me painfully. “Your father went for food but did not return. Your brother and Roman went in search of the two of you but did not return. We think Taba snuck out with them. That was this morning. I knew I should not have let them go. Mang Pedro, have you had any more dreams of where they might be?”

Mang Pedro sighs deeply but shakes his head. “My visions are weak now. Not like before when I was younger. They come only when they wish, and very cloudy. Not at all like before. I have dreamt nothing of the boys. Though I have opened my mind all day.”

“I should not have let them leave,” Mama says.

“It is not your fault, Aling Louisa.” Domingo glares at Mang Selso. “The men should have been the ones who volunteered to go, instead of the children. They are at fault.”

Mang Selso’s wife pinches him to keep him from saying anything. Feliciano watches my mother. He turns to Domingo. “I know of two Japanese encampments nearby.”

“I will find them on my own, without the help of a traitor.”

“Domingo—” Ate Lorna clutches his arm. “Perhaps we should listen. After all, he saved Isabelle. Perhaps he has had a change of heart. Perhaps he no longer sides with the Japanese.”

Domingo scoffs at her words. “Does a devil lose his horns?”

Ate Lorna looks at Feliciano pleadingly. “Am I right? Have you had a change of heart, Feliciano? Have you broken your ties with the Japanese?”

Feliciano is quiet, I think his eyes water, but he looks away, so I cannot tell. “I no longer side with them. When I saw what they did to the women, to Isabelle.”

I shudder at the memory and clutch the comb Aling Anna gave me until my knuckles hurt.

Domingo shouts, “Do you forget the others he has pointed a finger to and turned over to the Japanese? His masters.” He paces the floor; he looks ready to fight. He points at Feliciano. “Isabelle is the only reason you are still alive, boy.”

“I don’t need her protection,” Feliciano says with a sneer.

“Enough!” Ate Lorna cries.

Feliciano looks at my mother. “I will go to the encampments, to see if I can find them.”

Domingo laughs in a frightful way. “You are not going anywhere. I know your tricks. You think I would let you bring the Japanese back here?”

“Come with me then, unless you are frightened,” Feliciano challenges.

“Maybe you will just tell me where the encampments are right now.” Domingo stands swiftly and pulls Feliciano up by the collar.

The others shout for them to stop. Feliciano pulls out a pistol and brings it to Domingo’s head. “Or maybe I shoot you now, and I find them on my own.”

“Stop it! Look what they have done to us.” Ate Lorna falls to the ground, hysterical. “We are ready to kill one another at the slightest insult.”

My mother walks in between the two of them and puts her hand in front of Feliciano’s gun. She speaks softly. “Please, we will need you both in order for us to survive. Let us wait another hour. We have had such bad luck with sending people to find others. Though my heart screams for Alejandro, we need your strength. We cannot afford to lose you both. You two are the strongest. We may need you to search for food. We can barely walk. Let us wait. Rest, Domingo, you have been through much. If they do not return, perhaps you should both go in search of the children.”

They shove each other away and walk to opposite corners.

My brother Roderick asks in a small voice, “Have the Japanese killed Papa?”

All the talk has frightened him. I call him over to sit near me. He crouches beside me and places his hands between his knees as I rub his back.

“Hoy
, Roderick.” Mang Selso lifts a chin to my brother. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Ghosts?” Roderick asks skeptically; still, he scoots his back closer to me.

Domingo sits tensely beside Ate Lorna. He does not like her fussing over him. He will not allow her to brush his hair or clean his face with a towel. She has just bandaged his wounds. His skin looks gray, and I heard him whispering to her about going to meet his group after he finds Alejandro and Taba; but Ate Lorna would hear none of it.

“Well, Roderick? Do you believe in ghosts or not?” Mang Selso asks.

“I don’t know.” Roderick shrugs.

“What if I paid you five centimos?” Mang Selso takes out five coins and they clink in his hand. “See here? What if I paid you this to visit the house of a certain Mang Bidding in Aklan? Would you go?”

The province of Aklan runs rampant with stories of witches.
Asuwángs
, they are called, beings that sleep in the day standing up and at night come alive,
grow wings, and detach from their lower bodies in search of unsuspecting blood donors.

“Selso, ha, huwág mong itakotin ang mga batà,”
Mama chides him gently. Do not scare the children. But I know she is thankful for the distraction.

Roderick takes no time in considering the question. Immediately he shakes his head earnestly.
“Hindì Pò, duwág ako, hindì katulad ni Ate. Hindì siyá natatakót,”
he says. Not me, sir, I am not like my big sister. I am a coward.

I smile at him and brush his hair from his brow. “I would protect you, Roderick, I am not scared. Besides, there are no such things as ghosts.”

Mang Selso narrows his eyes; he knows he has captured Roderick’s attention for the time being, and he smiles knowingly. “Do you know why there are no telephone poles set in the province?”

“Why?” Roderick smirks, crossing his arms in front of him.

“Because the
asuwángs
do not allow it. Their wings would get caught. So they send their helpers in the morning to cut the phone wires down. That is why they have remained for so long undiscovered.”

Mang Selso’s father, Tay Fredrico, chooses this time to laugh and babble about spirits. It shakes Roderick’s confidence even more. He looks at the old Spaniard as if he were already a ghost. My mother sits beside me as I murmur soothing words in my brother’s ears and nudge him playfully. My heart longs to be little again and sit in my mother’s lap, but instead I sit like a proper lady, conscious of Feliciano’s eyes on me.

Feliciano’s aunt, Aling Anna, sighs with disgust. “Selso, you should not speak of things you know nothing of. You might disturb the dead. Do you want to hear a true story? Nothing silly about witches flying in the night. A true story of ghosts?”

Her tone is so serious, it sets my hair to attention. I raise my arm before me and look at the hairs.

“O anó? Natatakót ka rin ba?”
she asks me, the laughter coming from deep in her belly. What? Are you scared now, too?

Even though she treats me nicely, sometimes I hate her bossiness. Sometimes I agree with Mang Selso, who says she is a nasty old woman who enjoys bringing out others’ embarrassment and setting it all on the table for everyone to feast on. I can feel her studying me now.

“Do not hold this pain of what has happened to you close to your heart, Isabelle. You must let it go. No matter how painful. It will ruin you. If you keep silent, if you swallow it, it will eat you like a cancer.”

I close my eyes and rest my head on Mama’s shoulder.

“I tell you now, better to spit it all out, cry a hundred days over this matter,
an entire year, than ruin your life over it. You must acknowledge it now, so that it has no power over you. I do not assume to know what you are going through, but I do know something about hate. That is what you are feeling right now, is it not?”

My brother Roderick grows anxious at the silence. “Mama,” he moans.

Aling Anna searches in her purse and brings forth a coin. Her hand is wrinkled and thin. There are deep cracked lines against the shiny brown of her fingers. She holds the coin out to Roderick to stop his crying.
“O, itó
.” She nods. Take it.

Roderick looks over at Mama, then scurries forward like a little mouse and takes the coin. Everyone looks at her in surprise except Mama and me.

She laughs a hard, hacking laugh at their expressions. Her teeth appear, and I am jolted as always by the color of them, red, dark crimson. As if someone has punched her in the mouth. She chews betel nuts compulsively.

“You think I am ugly, stingy? I was not always this way. I know what most of you say: ‘She has so much money, owns so many stores. Why doesn’t she use any of it? Why does she keep saving it for a rainy day when that rainy day may never come?’ The reason is I never intend to spend that money, not on a rainy day or ever. It is not mine to spend. I do not deserve that money.”

Aling Anna pulls her blanket around her shoulders, then takes her two fingers as a roach scutters by and squashes it. We grit our teeth at the sound. She takes the cigarette from her mouth, studies the burnt-down stub, and takes one more puff. She turns the lighted end, fading like a coal but still lit, and taps it to her tongue to kill the flame.

“Inay!”
Roderick shouts. Ma! He turns his head quickly against my arm.

Aling Anna looks at him with amusement. “Shh, it is nothing. Only a little flame. That cannot hurt me. I have been through so much more. This little fire, you think that will hurt me? I will tell you about something much more painful. Will you sit still and listen, Roderick?”