Feelings
Rounding the Bends
By Emmanuelle
Swing back the hands of time. Once upon an island, once upon a summertime.
Those were days spent on idle contemplation of the sun and the sea, the sand and the sons of man. And in-between, one gorged on broiled fresh fish, coconuts and pineapples. And the stories that abound, but that were kept bound to those rocks, those shores.
Sometime though, one interrupted the idyll, hopped on a jeep, and followed the scent towards civilization. Oh, for a bottle of chilled cola, or a glass of halo-halo with that extra dash of ingredient – a videoke surprisingly clanked alive by the same gold piece worth five peso.
The jeep had no reliable brakes, so one hugged the mountain. It was that, or one plunged down the embankment to the sea. If one had more coins to spare, one fetched the cousins and the trip was noisier but a lot more fun. There were more houses to choose from for dinner to titillate the mouth’s juices. Or more sources of stories to titillate the creative writing juice.
Along the way, on one of the unpaved road’s many bends, more often than not, one chanced upon this woman on her way to or from town, an hour and a half away by brakeless jeep, a half-day if one walked. If offered a ride, she would look at you, then through you to beyond you. She would always be barefooted, and would be wearing a clean but faded cotton blouse and skirt.
And hers was this story.
Her mother gave a fatherless birth to Angela. Her father was someone faceless, without substance, whom her mother had met while in freshman year in Manila. Though, he must have been fair, handsome and somehow gifted with an artist’s hand or a singer’s voice. For Angela grew up fair and beautiful and with a voice to stand solo in the church choir. And hands to do wonders with colors and coal.
Her mother would not allow her to cross the seas however. One unclaimed pregnancy in the family was one too many, she stood pat. So, at seventeen, Angela was employed as laundry girl to the master of the land, a Spanish mestizo. Who had a bachelor for a brother. Who visited now and then from Manila.
When Angela came home pregnant, the mother insisted that the masters do right with her daughter. In all fairness, the brothers did. The mother wasn’t clear on whoever did the impregnating, though the younger brother married Angela in a simple ceremony.
When the girl-child was born, Angela sang more angelic-like; the rafters of the church would seem to burst with the trilling of her voice. And her colors and coal swirled from nature to paper to canvas. One would be hard put to separate dawn from drawn. Angela saw beauty in everything, and everything became tangible things of beauty through her.
Then stories filtered through the great walls of the house, that Angela suffered bruises and bumps too often to be believable as mere accidents of falling down the stairs. Or crashing through unseen corners at night.
The brothers said Angela was losing her mind. They took away her child. They sent Angela home to heal.
One day, Angela went to visit her child. She hummed her child to sleepy, she danced her child to sleep. She hummed and danced out of the child’s room, out of the house, out of the walled yard. Then round the bend.
Angela and her child were gone missing for a week.
When Angela was found wandering around high up the mountain, the child was gone. Angela’s mind was gone, too. She had long gone round that particular bend.
For a woman who has the whitest, most slim pair of feet, Angela had this sudden aversion to shoes or slippers. Her toes suddenly found their best friend was soil, dried or mucky, sandy or weedy. She did nothing but walked barefoot to town, and back. A half-day to, a half-day back.
She walks thus to this day.
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