Jose Elvin Bueno

Self-Aware Characters in Telenovela Endings

Maria

YOUR STORY ENDS when you fall in love without rhyme or reason.

How is that even possible, when you have all these rules?

Like never fall in love with a coño. This is actually easy to follow. All you have to do is avoid men with names like Iñaki or Yñigo, who are, of course, looking for someone named Maria or Clara. Men who could have anyone they wanted, and so, by dictates of macho tradition, want someone who does not want them back. Such men always have papa (accent on the second syllable) or mama (same accent on the same syllable) issues. Or both. Maybe maid issues. Or even pet issues.

But you get exactly one of these men as your suitor. It is not that you are hampas-lupa, but your job at the bank makes you look that way, when you compare it with his job. Which is, head of wealth mismanagement of Papa’s money.

At his first attempt, you – what’s the word – make him basted. This causes him to redouble his offensive. Flowers and poems that you find equally offensive. The more you say no, the more he woos you. From the cheesy gifts, he shifts to materialistic ones. Jewelry and perfume that you find insulting. But he does not let up. Like he knows you have already fallen in love, and things are already beyond your control.

You hate him. You hate him with all your heart. His smug, mestizo looks that could actually pass for Español. The height, the hair - susmaryosep! – the hair, the way he walks, everything. His Ivy League diploma. His friends who are just his clones, down to the clothes they wear – the branded and the bespoke – and the language they speak, SpanGlishTag or TagSpanGlish or EngSpanTag. Then there’s the patriarch and matriarch. You shudder at the thought that you will be like them in a few years’ time, living in that gaudy, palatial home with the maids and the pets.

Having a family. You hate that thought, having none yourself, except some distant relative you know nothing about, other than rumors that he is a squatter living like a rat in the slums.

“I hate you.” This, you say to his face. This sounds very wrong and very weird, for you have already fallen in love.

Never be the jealous one – another one of your rules. So you try to play it cool. You do things that people in love do. Which is, to ignore what is happening in exchange for what, exactly, romance? You don’t understand any of it. You hate him with all your being one moment, and now, you love him with all your heart.

What is even more difficult to understand is the bliss that comes with it. You meet Papa and Mama and the maids and the pets. There is something so ordinary about your future in-laws (for after all, you are a Maria, and holding hands should lead to marriage) that it is subtly sinister, and it’s neither the greased hair nor the over-the-top fragrance.

Even the treatment of the housemaids is a non-event. There is neither physical nor verbal abuse – no favoritism, either, nothing of the sort that would make it obvious that one of the silent, subservient uniformed girls is the product of Papa’s loins. The only inhumane thing you can think of is that their uniforms are a bit matching with the curtains.

After three more weekends, you concede that they welcome you.

But perhaps the most difficult to understand about the whole situation of suddenly falling in love is this: he, the coño boy, is somehow happy with you. What the –, you ask yourself. What the –, indeed.

It gets even more bizarre. For aren’t you supposed to be miserable? There should be nights of tears and abuse and shouting and alsa-balutan. He should give you a black eye. Maybe a swollen lip. Something you would be eager to explain away as slipping on the stairs, or walking into a glass door. You should be the battered woman. You should be suffering in silence, tears falling down your cheeks during rainy, moonless nights. You should be keeping a diary, in your handwriting that is so legible it borders on calligraphy. And this very same diary should be pilfered by someone, preferably one of the maids or in-laws.

After a few more weeks, you find out– surprise, surprise! – there is no other woman. How long have you waited behind the door or by the corner wall, to hear him whisper precious declarations of lust and infidelity? How often have you searched his pockets, sniffed his clothes, opened his messages? How many sleepless nights have you suffered, waiting for him to talk in his sleep and moan another woman’s name? You even wish it could be one of the maids – the petite one who is quite the looker, even in the kukur uniform. You wish they were hatching a plan behind your back, something to do with love as much as money, like inheritance or land titles. These things are not totally implausible, what with you falling in love with a coño.

But no. None of these come to pass, and truth be told, you, too, are happy. Yes, you are happy. Again, this just seems too easy. You try to be a martir, but how can you? Every moment with him is either a tableau of marital bliss at best, or domestic boredom at most.

So you break this other rule. You strive to be jealous. Since the maids – oh, how you desperately wish it was one of the maids! – are already out of the question, you try to be jealous with yourself. For you should never be happy with him.

You keep this jealousy inside, squeezing it into a fiery ball that you house within your womb. You let this jealousy grow into anger, and this anger into hate, and this hate into fiery, murderous rage that is bursting to be birthed.

There is only one rule you haven’t broken yet.

Never fall in love with someone who looks like you could kill him in a fight. This is the last rule you break. No, not the falling in love part. The fighting part. The killing part. Cariño brutal sounds like foreplay, compared to what you have in mind.

“I love you,” you say to the one you love.

Dagul

YOUR STORY ENDS when you meet your untimely demise.

You never see them coming – the twelve rods of rusting corrugated rebars that enter the windshield and head straight into your upper body, punching through the leather jacket (Of course you wear a leather jacket; you are a maton, aren’t you?) and your tight black shirt, into your flesh, your bones, penetrating even the driver’s seat, and the impalement continues toward the back.

The car finally stops, and the agony begins. There is something in your ears, not exactly a ringing but more of a scraping, as if an excavation is happening inside your ear canals, as if someone is digging right through your brain. Your konsensya perhaps, although you doubt it. You don’t have a conscience. Not having one comes with sowing violence and reaping fear and being called ‘Dagul’.

Your eyes dim. There is a heaviness that you feel, not in the lids that you will to open, but the weight is anchored in the seeing. You have to make an effort to see.

The pain now takes a stranglehold of you. Everything hurts all at once, but what hurts the most is breathing. You attempt to shout, but no sound comes.

You just keep what you are thinking to yourself. That this is it. This is the end. You would have preferred a shootout, so you could at least say something trite, something threatening, something both trite and threatening, with words like “‘bala’” or “‘impiyerno’”.