38.Baby

Auwling liked to take walks down by the lake after the little girls were in bed and Dionisio was deep into some television show. The older ones seldom were at home anymore, and she had no idea where they went or what they were doing. When she asked them, they just said, “Out with my friends.” She tried to keep Pilar home more, but it was no use. She couldn’t tie the girl to the bedpost, and punishment seemed to do no good. Their Manang couldn’t be angry at them all the time, and in truth, anger never came easily to Auwling. It was better to just let them do as they pleased. She had allowed all of her own children to call her Manang, as Baby did, even though the correct name for “Mother” was Nanang.

She didn’t know how she had gotten to be like this. Important things didn’t seem to matter in America. When she was a girl in the Philippines, she dreamed that when she had a family, she would be the calm center and all her children would love and respect her; her husband would honor and take care of her. Instead, the children hardly talked to her anymore. They didn’t have the time or inclination to hear stories of their homeland. They were foreigners—Americans. Southerners. They drove pickup trucks and ate fried chicken and got into fistfights. They couldn’t speak Tagalog, even though she had tried to teach them when they were little. Sometimes she had a hard time understanding them, with all the American slang they used.

She never again saw her own mother after they left the Philippines. A few times, Auwling and Dionisio made the effort to bring her over to live with them, but Lula didn’t want leave her friends and home.

Auwling had no friends except her husband. She knew that Dionisio cared for her, but he would never love her as he had loved Maeling. He had only married her because she was Maeling’s sister and it made him feel close to his lost love. Auwling knew this, even though Dionisio would never admit it. There were times, even in the middle of the night when they had just made love, that Auwling felt more alone than if she had been by herself in the bed. Dionisio would pat her on the hand—two quick pats—turn his back, and leave her—to go into his dreams of Maeling, she suspected, running through the fields, singing as she used to do.

Auwling, of course, never mentioned her fears. She swallowed them, as she swallowed the small hurts and insults from her children, until, over the years, they had made an indigestible ball in the pit of her stomach.

—

At night, though, the moist lake air was like a balm to her spirit, and she would sometimes sit, outside of time, on a log at the edge of the water and watch the frogs leap and the catfish splash. This night, Maeling was once again on her mind, a strong presence, as if she was out there waiting for something. Auwling wondered if her sister’s spirit would ever find rest. Since her death, Maeling had visited her older sister many times—not only in dreams, but in the waking hours of the night. When Auwling was alone in the dark, she would only have to sit quietly, empty her mind, and Maeling would appear as if through fine silver gauze, her eyes liquid brown and sad.

Maeling spoke to her mind, not with words, exactly, but with whole thoughts. She asked her sister to forgive her for taking her own life. She assured Auwling that she had done the right thing by leaving her under the house. It was what she had wanted. There was nothing else to be done with one so unclean. She was full of sorrow that she didn’t live to be a mother to Babilonia and a wife to her husband, but she was grateful to her sister for taking her place. There was also something else Maeling wanted to say that Auwling could not understand. She tried, because she knew that if she could understand, then perhaps Maeling would let go and rise to the next world, but the message eluded her. More and more often, Maeling appeared with an urgency not felt before.

Even now, Auwling could see her sister’s spirit out over the water, in a silver cloud, hovering above the surface of the still lake as wisps of fog began to rise.

It was the same now as it had been the night the girl Carlene died. That night in July, Auwling remembered, was also damp with summer fog. The tops of the trees disappeared into the mist, which gave its own light and made the woods closer—sinister, as though they were hiding the Aswang in their branches.

Almost, she hadn’t gone for her stroll that night, but then decided not to be silly and afraid. Even so, as she walked through the woods near the lake, the feeling of danger persisted, and she decided to listen to her senses and return home. She had just turned toward the house when she heard an unfamiliar noise and stopped, frozen.

Behind the honeysuckle vines near the edge of the lake, she squatted and listened. She heard the sound of paddles, then the low moan of a woman and the curse of a man. There was a splash, as if a fisherman were throwing a large fish back into the water. There were no more moans then, only the sound of the paddles slapping against the surface of the lake.

As the sound moved farther away, Auwling parted the vines and saw the silhouette of a man sitting in a small rowboat. He continued rowing and was soon swallowed up in the mist. The surface of the lake was calm and there was no sign of a woman, but over the water the silver form of Maeling hovered. Perhaps the Aswang mermaid Seriena had already taken the woman to the bottom to feed on her blood and the spirit of Maeling watched.

Afraid, hidden on the bank, Auwling appealed to her sister.

“Maeling, tell me what to do. Tell me what it is you want. Who is this woman? What should I do?” But the ghost of Maeling rose higher and then faded, leaving nothing behind, not even a cleft in the fog.

Auwling went home and told her husband what she had seen.

“Should we call the police, Dionisio?” she said. “I don’t like to think about the woman alone in the lake with the Aswang.”

“She is dead, you say?”

“Now, most certainly.”

“And you are sure you don’t know who the man was?”

“No. It was dark, and I could not see him clearly. I have never heard the voice before.”

“Then there is nothing you can tell the police. They would only question you and disrupt our lives. They wouldn’t trust us, because they think we are like the Vietnamese. They will find out about her soon enough. It has nothing to do with us.”

“As you say, Dionisio. I will tell no one.”

And I will tell no one about the ghost of Maeling, either, she thought. Especially not you, my beloved husband. She is enough a part of you as it is.