SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“Go away po ,” I tell it, adding the honorific since Nanay always taught me not to be rude to gods. “I’m having a good dream for once.” I usually have nightmares during bangungot , trapped halfway between sleep and waking, unable to push my way fully to either side. The pressure on my chest, the terrible prescience that something very bad is about to happen, and the sound of distant screaming, like a boiling saucepan of human voices, are too familiar to me. But tonight there is only a pleasant floating sensation, fresh from a dream of flying over the oceans cresting Manila.

Cool, smooth fingers push my eyelids open. Just as my mother told me, the dead god dresses like a saint, all in chipped white paint and dried offerings, braided together on cheap twine. It is man-shaped, though it is neither a man nor a woman. Even though it has no skin or flesh, the stench of rotting lechon assaults my nostrils.

Magandang gabi , my child , it whispers. Blessed evening, Maria, my heir .

“You have the wrong Reyes sister,” I tell the dead god. “If you’re talking blessings and inheritance, find Silvia po . She’s two years older.”

It lowers its bone-pale head, and kisses my hand. The waking dream ripples around me, and my beautiful, healthy dream-arm evaporates, shriveling and twisting into a withered claw. My real arm. I do not make mistakes, says the dead god. You wear my mark, like your nanay and your lola and many others before you. It cradles my mangled hand gently, lacing its fingers through mine. I chose you, just as I chose them. Therefore you are mine, Christina Maria Reyes, are you not?

I fight the sleep paralysis enough to snatch my hand out of the dead god’s grasp, but when I try to cradle it to my chest, my limb flops against me like a useless wing.

“Why are you here?” I shout. The shrill boiling sound has started up again, a high wail in the distance. “ Nanay promised you wouldn’t show yourself to me until I was grown. I’ve still got years! Besides, Nanay is your disciple right now, not me.”

No , says the god. It has no eyes in its empty, hollow face, but somehow it manages to look away. Not any more. Your mother is dead.

The waking dream shatters. I bolt upright in my bed, drenched in cold sweat. The dead god is gone. My sister sleeps quietly, tucked next to me in our small, wooden bed; none of the other maids in the room are awake, either.

It takes me almost a minute to realize that the teakettles I’ve been hearing are my own high-pitched, muffled whine, and that my lap is damp with tears.

My sister is draped in piña , in the middle of the Calderones’ living room, trying to avoid the dressmaker’s pins and the American ma’ams’ glares. The thin piña cloth shimmers over her dark hair like a halo, and she reminds me of the fresco of The Holy Mother, on the wall of Saint Peter of Makati’s chapel, only rounder and shorter. But she has the Holy Mother’s same expression of inner contentment and peace. All of the bladed comments and piña in the world would not be enough to hide Silvia’s inner glow.

“I don’t know why we’re paying for this wedding,” says Ma’am Chitti. She is sprawled out on the couch, neck beading with sweat, vying for a spot in front of the electric fan. Her voice rings loud over the dressmaker’s muttered measurements, uncaring of who hears. We maids, standing in the corners of the room, are all but invisible. “I don’t know why there’s going to be a wedding at all.”

“It’s because he got her pregnant, the idiot.” Ma’am Margarita flaps a newspaper in front of her face to create a fake breeze, and snaps her fingers at me. “Water,” she orders without looking. “With ice.” To her sister, she says, “If he was going to be fucking the maids, especially the under-aged ones, he should have at least used protection.”

“It’s harder to get, here,” says Ma’am Chitti. “ Kasi Catholic.”

I dip out of the room with a soft, “Yes, Ma’am Margarita,” and pad to the kitchen. My withered right arm is tucked beneath my apron, so as not to offend any onlookers’ sight.

“Mom should just send her back to the province where she came from. Get rid of her, and let her have the baby there.” Ma’am Margarita’s voice chases me down the hall, and I bite my bottom lip so hard that my teeth threaten to break the skin.

I have not told Silvia about our mother. I will keep it buried deep inside myself, a dark, jagged hole. Maybe I will tell her after the wedding. Maybe I won’t at all. After all, with no cell phone service back home, and a postal service that takes ages and loses more letters than it delivers to the provinces, how could I know such a thing?

Stepping into the kitchen at midday is like wading through a cloud of steam. Even the ceiling fan on its highest setting can’t cut through the oppressive heat trapped in the room. Two of the other maids, Jene and Vicky, glance up from the stove, where they’re making sinigang . “How’s it going in there, Tintin?” Jene asks me.

“It’s fine,” I mumble. I keep my body angled away from them, as I slip my right arm out of my apron, and use my wrist to open the cupboard where we keep the glassware. My hand works just fine, even if I can’t use my fingers to grip things. I know my arm scares other people, though, and even the other maids still stare, when they think I’m not looking. I’m always looking. “Silvia’s getting fitted for her wedding dress, and the ma’ams are making a big deal out of it.”

“It is a big deal!” chirps Vicky. Before I know it, she’s dropped the ice bucket on the counter next to me, the top already propped open. “You only get married once. And especially a maid, getting married to Sir Carlos—”

“It’s no wonder they’re pissed,” says Jene. “Your sister’s a nice girl, Tintin, but she’s a probinsyana like us. They want a high-class bride for their brother.”

“You don’t have to remind me.” I slam down a glass a little too hard, and the others flinch. Sometimes I wonder if they are scared of me, even though I am five years younger than Vicky, and two younger than Silvia. My mother, small and dark-skinned, has the same effect on people.

My mother. My stomach turns.

“Tin,” calls Ma’am Loretta, her voice muffled through her bedroom door, adjunct to the kitchen. “Tin, I need you here right now!”

“I’ll be right there po ,” I shout from the kitchen. Hurriedly balancing the glass of water and its coaster on a tray, I ferry it to Ma’am Margarita in the living room, stepping carefully over the train of my sister’s dress. Ma’am Margarita takes it without a word, and I dash back to Ma’am Loretta’s room. Tucking the tray under my arm, I knock on her door. “Ma’am?”

“Come in, Tin.”

Ma’am Loretta, matriarch of the Calderones, lies on her bed in near-darkness. All of the curtains are drawn; only a single clip reading lamp lights her face. The shelves lining her room are covered in wooden carvings of saints, each adorned with wreaths of dried, dead sampaguitas . The air is perfumed with their stench.

I do not know how old Ma’am Loretta is, but if my own grandmother was still alive—if she’d had a normal life, without the interference and patronage of the dead god—I think she would be almost as old as Ma’am Loretta.

Ma’am Loretta beckons me over. “I have a special task for you, Tin. I need you to go to the jeweler’s for me.” Her voice is low, as she hands me a small wooden box. I cradle it in the crook of my right arm, flipping the latch open with my left hand. My breath catches in my throat when I see what’s inside.