'The End Came, And No One Knew Its Angel’s Name'

'The End Came, And No One Knew Its Angel’s Name' | Daily Tribune

On that night I entered the world, the women in the island of Basco were skittish around my mother. She had barely managed to bring her boat to the shore while carrying me in her arms, still slick with the fluids and blood from her womb, as well as the droplets of rain that managed to reach me despite the thick swaddle of my mother’s alampay. Though they did not treat her as one of them, the women knew better than to leave a single ailing mother who had just given birth on her own to be at the mercy of the elements and of life and death. So they helped her off the boat and into her hut. They made her chew some leftover rice porridge from their own homes. They bound her stomach to help with the postpartum swelling. Then they fussed over me, warming up my body near a fireplace, rubbing oils on my forehead. They worried about how I got rained on, how this might make me go blind or be sickly when I grow up.

Thankfully, I grew up healthy enough. The people said that it was because my mother was the daughter of both the sea and the moon. And she did look the part, with her hair falling in wild but beautiful waves, as black as a squid’s ink during midnight, and her skin smooth and dewy as though she glowed with a divine light from within. They did not know her, but they knew of her. And they knew she only sang under the light of a full moon, or when the waves were lapping at the shore with a calm but excitable energy.

The people on the island regarded her with fascination at first, this strange woman whose name no one knew, whose manner of speaking hinted at a degree of intelligence which they interpreted as snobbishness and arrogance. Still, no one could tell her origins. All they had were theories and chismes on why she was here, as though she just popped up on the island from nowhere. Perhaps she was not just from another town, but another world as well. Even when the women elbowed each other and hissed at each other to approach this strange woman, they all shied away from her and the pretty and unfamiliar cadence of her words. They couldn’t even begin to ask the questions that nagged at their brains.

But all that changed when one night, someone found her laughing and dancing maniacally under the roof of her hut. A storm boomed and crashed, almost destroying the other huts that lined the beach. They could see her silhouette amidst the flashes of lightning that illuminated the dark sky. They heard her laughter in between each crash of thunder, uncaring about the cold rain that pelted at her skin and made her baro’t saya stick to her body. They then held her at a distance, too afraid to know what insanity or power she had. She did not fear the angry sky and sea that were at war with each other, just like from the creation story they told their children—which they learned from their parents, who learned it from their parents, who learned it from their parents.

Someone speculated that she was like an excitable and foolish child, laughing at the way her mother and father screamed at each other’s throats over an argument she had orchestrated. Another one suggested that perhaps she was worshipping the power of the storm. Despite it having the power to destroy, it was the storm that had accompanied her on the night she gave birth to me. The people then all nodded their heads resolutely, taking in the words as true as the laws of nature and the divine. They then called her either a diwata or mangkukulam while simultaneously crossing themselves and uttering prayers that Padre Salazar at Santo Domingo church had taught them.

Despite this, the people treated me more like one of them than they ever did my mother. This was not saying much, because even as a young girl, I always caught how they tried to include me with the other children almost as an afterthought. This was something I was both grateful and resentful for. They all tried to hide it, I knew. But as is the nature of children, I had frequently heard accusations that some of my playmates threw my way whenever we had a petty fight. “Di tayo bate,” they would whine. They would say that nothing good ever came out of playing with the daughter of a mangkukulam anyway. And every so often, when I would run up to Mama to help her with the fish she caught and to see if she had a book for me, I would catch her strained smile and tight eyes. And then whoever she was chatting or arguing with would greet me with a voice that was too bright and cheerful to be genuine, with poorly disguised wariness and guilt behind their eyes. But even with this simmering tension underneath, Mama would never fail to remind me to say my po’s and opo’s. To say salamat po and walang anuman po, and to always be ready with a polite smile to the islanders.

Childhood play was always a fickle war. I still marched on bravely towards my peers each day, each week, each year, not knowing if teasing would befall me or just a quiet acceptance that whether they liked it or not, the other children were stuck with me. Once, some of the men of the island were teaching us kids how to make kites out of thin paper and twigs from the beach. The women milling rice and separating malunggay leaves all huddled together around a table under the shade of palm tree. They argued amongst themselves not so subtly about the story of my birth. Even some of the men found themselves getting distracted from the task of making kites, occasionally making quips and offering their opinions here and there. Though the women sat quite far away, my "playmates" still unabashedly listened on with wide eyes. They did not even bother to hide how some of them slowly inched closer and closer just to hear juicy gossip that I knew they would use against me the next time we went toe to toe. I couldn’t do anything except glare at my playmates and even half-heartedly scold them about how it was rude to be nosy. But even then, I too listened in on what the adults had to say, whether I was blessed by the moon or the sea.

“It is the sea that blessed her,” said Aling Nena. “Though the storm raged, the waves never crashed the boat. The water that rained on her head may very well have been the same water from her mother’s womb. Or perhaps she was baptised by the sea from then on, claiming her as one of theirs.”

“No, it is the moon,” argued Mang Tibo. “The moon pulled and pushed the tides, making sure to steer the boat from the waves that could swallow the little boat. It illuminated the way so that her mother could reach the shore.”

“Hush now,” Lola Claudia interjected. “Padre Salazar will be disappointed in you lot. You know he says that these superstitions are sins. Only what the church teaches is true. Stop talking about the kid and her mother, ha? Parang mga manok na putak nang putak.”

Later on, when I was older, my mother helped me practise how to read and write on the beach. There weren’t any schools on our island yet. As I practised writing my name on the sand, I hesitantly looked up at my mother, studying her dark eyes and the slope of her nose. Then I summoned the courage to ask, "Mama, is it true what they say about me? About you?"

Even without clarification, she and I shared a knowing look at each other. We were aware of just how far and wide the tales surrounding her grew to be. She did not say anything at first, and for a brief moment or so, I thought she would simply shake her head and say, "Wala yon, anak," like she always did when I was younger. Perhaps she would make a vague reason like she did that one time: "Yes, Aling Nena is right. A man did give these books to me, but he was a very respectable señor, anak. I have not done anything wrong or sinful that you should worry about."

But just as quick as the reservation on her face came, it suddenly disappeared. Her eyes suddenly opened up to me, full of emotion I couldn’t place. Longing? Loneliness? A feeling that she didn’t belong? The emotion and the sudden vulnerability left me clinging to her sleeve. I was ready to take back my question, ready to tell her, It’s okay, Mama. You don’t have to answer. But before I could open my mouth, Mama pulled me into an embrace. I clung to her, inhaling the sea-salt and orange scent of her.

She then pulled away, and with a cheeky smile and a wink, she bent down and let her bony finger trace letters on the sand until she had written down with big bold strokes her given name. My eyes widened in understanding, even after the water washed away those words, leaving behind salty foam and a bunch of pretty shells. At that moment, I finally understood who she was, what she was—or perhaps I thought I understood. All I knew was she carried both the sea and the sky in her name. It was far from the names that the peninsulares brought with them or the names that survived from the indios. I thought that perhaps this was the first step to figuring out this woman I called my mother. She then pulled me into an embrace and whispered in my ear, “Let the people talk, and let them think what they want to think. But do not tell them of my name, you hear? For names have power, and knowing mine will either confirm or deny what they wish to know.”

“How come Lola Claudia says that the world was formed when the sky and the sea fought, but the Bible says there is only one Creator, and that it took Him seven days to fully form the universe?” I asked one night as my mother reread to me the book of Genesis from the Bible. Though my breasts were hardly formed, I was already starting to blossom into adulthood at eleven, which meant I was too old for bedtime stories and cuddling with my mother and clinging to her chest like a newborn babe. But she was always happy to give me these childish comforts without me having to ask for them.

“Well, there are many stories, anak,” she answered after a moment of thought. “I read that the Greeks, people who live far, far away and have light skin and strong noses, believe that first there was nothingness which they called Chaos, and from the light, Gaia, or Mother Earth, came to be. The Tsinos believe that there was a huge egg that contained Yin-Yang, dark and light, feminine and masculine, and out of that egg emerged Pan Gu who separated the earth and the sky. There are many more stories out there, some are very similar to each other, and some very different as well.”

“But which is true?” I asked insistently, kicking my legs under the blanket and twisting in my mother’s arms.

“You decide, anak. I have come to learn that knowledge all over the world deserves their merit, don’t you think? And only when one has studied them can one decide which is true. You turn over each story in your head, looking at it with multiple eyes. Maybe one day you’ll reach an answer. Or maybe not. Maybe you’ll just get more and more questions! That’s the beauty of learning, isn’t it?”

“Well, what do you think?”

She then shut the Bible and put it away, turning the gas lamp low so that there is only the faintest hint of orange light in the blackness of the night. Even without seeing her face, I felt my mother’s cheeky smile. “I think that no matter how the world was created is besides the point. The point is there was someone, Someone Greater Than Us, who made everything, and I can’t wait to meet them.”

With a last kiss on my forehead, she said, “Next time, if I have money to spare, I’ll get you more books from the mainland about the Other Life, where there is no pain and no strife, where there are answers to your questions, and where we don’t have to worry about what we’re going to eat or what weather we’re going to have the next day.”

But books were not cheap. We barely had money to spare as mother’s fish hardly made enough for three meals a day. She told me that it was because of the Americans—a new people who were tall like trees and spoke with a crisp cadence of syllables, who came to our country the year I was born—and their bigger boats and more expensive fishing equipment, that she and the other fishermen were struggling to sell their meagre catch. When she said "Americans,” it seemed as though the word came out with a confusing mixture of resentment, awe, and familiarity.

I asked mother what kind of fishing equipment these people who came into our country had, as surely theirs weren’t any better than the strong hand-woven nets that mother used. But she shook her head and said that the Americans had gigantic nets which were pulled by steel, and that they could catch thirty days worth of fish in just one night. Those days, my mother could only bring home some thin notebooks, with paper so flimsy that I could read what I had written even if I flipped the page over. And the few books she did bring were second-hand books from public schools that were so old and frail, the pages were falling out of the spines that I had to organise them like faded pieces of a puzzle.

And so I turned to my trusty Bible, with its hardbound cover and thick pages that could withstand the salty sea air and the frequency in which I flipped between its pages. I wrote about the stories I liked, especially from the book of Revelation. It was said that the promised paradise would come after the angels blew their trumpets and the sky turned crimson blood. I wrote about how I imagined the sky would change colour, how it would be so majestic and how the colour would be exactly the colour that ran through my veins, not like the red-orangey hues that happened at sunset. I wrote that the sky had to be crimson before Heaven, so that there wouldn’t be any confusion if it was simply a normal day or it was the end of times.

And I wrote about the trumpets, imagining a noise so profound that at first, no one could tell what they were hearing; I imagined it was this novelty, this exposure to the terribly unfamiliar, that would make them realise that Heaven was near. I’ve never heard a trumpet before, have never even known what it looked like aside from the simple illustration on my Bible. But I imagined it to be in the most awesome silver, shinier than some of the metal poles that were for when the boats had to be restored. Or perhaps even in the purest gold, more beautiful than the simple earrings my mother wore all the time.

But the end of times came to me quicker than I anticipated. It did not bring with it glory and happiness, light and peace.

It was the storm, they said on that awful morning, where some of the palm trees lay unrooted and fallen on the beach. The men came hauling a broken boat that I recognised was my mother’s. Except my mother wasn’t in it. She had been missing almost two full days, three if you count this one, and I had spent those days pacing our hut with uncertainty, wringing out my hands to let go of the nervous energy I felt. I knew mother always came back from the town in the mainland on time. At first I had assumed and convinced myself that she simply waited in the mainland for the storm to calm before making her way home. Perhaps she had even found some discarded books from the newly built schools run by the Thomasites. And yet… It was the storm—the same storm that birthed me—that eventually took her life.

They couldn’t find her body, Mang Tibo said, his wrinkled mouth drooping into a grim frown. He even made the best divers go as deep as they could go and swim for as long as they could hold their breath. The island people could only bow their heads in respect as I fell to my knees on the sand, wailing and crying for my beloved mother who was taken too early from me. Not even the women knelt to comfort me or embrace me. Really, even if they tried, I would have pushed them away. I only wanted my mother. Who was going to teach me about the world now? Who was going to read to me stories from near and far at night before I slept? My mother was my rock, the constant and steady hand despite the number of storms that came and went on our little island. She was supposed to be with me when I eventually settled down with one of the boys on the island. She was supposed to teach me all about being a woman. I hadn’t even had my monthlies yet, even though some of the girls my age already had theirs. What would I do without my mother’s brilliance and wisdom and intelligence?

I spent days, maybe even weeks, not talking to anyone, even as Aling Nena knocked on our—my—hut and brought some green mangoes and bagoong for me; Even as my friends Paciano and Maria called out to me through the window, inviting me for a swim. I stewed in anger at these people who I had known my whole life. I knew that despite their guilt-ridden warmth towards me, they never extended this acceptance and welcoming to my mother. I knew they did not care that she was dead—perhaps they’re even glad. Now there was no diwata or mangkukulam that they had to fear or whisper about every time a storm came that threatened our lives.

I took to writing and reading my Bible almost obsessively, trying desperately to find answers about the Other Life my mother talked about. But the wretched book was desperately lacking the specific information I wanted, needed. I knew that it was only one side of hundreds if not thousands of other beliefs about Heaven. I only knew at that moment that I needed to write what I knew, and I needed to write and read and imagine that mother was waiting for me, at peace, laughing and dancing under the moonlit sky and playing with the flowing and ebbing waves on the shore.

I prayed desperately for the end of the world to come. I prayed desperately that Heaven would come sooner rather than later, despite also knowing that this was incredibly selfish of me. Every day, I would look at the sky from my window, imagining a sudden shift from the azure to the crimson. But despite my most desperate prayers for it to happen, the sky never did turn red—but my eyes certainly did. I would sob for my mother, cursing the sky and the sea for not protecting their daughter, or for choosing to take her life away from me.

One day, I woke up even before the dawn started to peek from the horizon. There was a panging hunger in my gut. My tongue sat dry and heavy like lead in my mouth. I felt the cold sea air seeping into the wooden floor. From the open window, for a moment or so, I thought I heard singing.

Singing. On a full moon.

Like someone who had just been raised from the dead, I stumbled out of my hut, not even bothering to get an alampay or pañuelo to protect my body from the cold. The old cream bestida I wore hardly reached past my knees. Its thin cloth clung to my famished and unwashed body as I made my way to the shore. My mother’s boat, fixed by the men for my use, sat at the beach waiting for me, almost glistening under the light of the moon. I could still hear a distant tune. When the waves lapped at my toes greedily and noisily, I was sure I heard the faintest hint of laughter.

I pushed the boat and got on, expertly balancing myself despite the bobbing of the boat from the waves. I felt a distinct chill in the air, almost like a caress or whisper against my cheek. My hair was all over the place, messy and tangled from sleep and the past weeks of moping and mourning. When I closed my eyes, I felt the sharp air in my nose travel to my lungs, warming me up despite the chattering in my teeth and the shaking of my fingers. I used one of the wooden oars to push me farther into the sea, trying desperately to search for my mother.

I hadn’t felt this invigorated since her supposed death. And I knew without a doubt that the people were wrong. Aling Nena and Mang Tibo and everyone else were wrong. My mother wasn’t dead—how could she be? She was the daughter of the sea and the sky, and perhaps she had simply gone home for a while, wanting to visit those that gave her life, and in turn, gave me my life. How else could she be singing to me, reminding me of the sweetest sounds that she said were of paradise? I was then sure my mother was not a diwata or a mangkukulam. She was one of God’s angels. How had I not realised it sooner? This mysterious, vivacious, intelligent, and kind woman was an angel. And she was calling me home, and I was bound to follow her wherever she goes.

I had been rowing for hours before I stopped out of exhaustion. The moon was still in the sky, but her glow was slowly fading as the sky turned from midnight black to dusk blue. Barely even managing to lift the oar back into the boat, I fell on my back, feeling my lungs catch up on the cold salty air and my tears falling down the sides of my face. For a brief moment, I let myself close my eyes. I envisioned my mother in a white dress, smiling at me the way she would when I woke up from a bad dream, wearing her gold earrings and a shell necklace around her neck. The singing I had heard at first had faded almost an hour ago. I desperately wanted to hear it again, imagine it again, bask in its sweetness again. As my stomach rumbled noisily, I hissed at it almost as if scolding it to be quiet. But the rumbling continued.

To my surprise, it grew louder, and I realised that it wasn’t just my gut, but my body felt the sound and the vibrations all over, sending chills up my spine. There was a whir, whir, whir, almost like a steady mechanical beat above my head. With a jolt, I forced my eyes back open and sat back up on the boat, too fast that I almost tipped myself and the boat over. I looked around frantically for the ever growing rumbling, feeling the unfamiliar vibrations in the air, and when I looked up at the twilight sky, that’s when I saw it.

Something was flying overhead, too big and too loud to be a bird. As the sun finally rose from the horizon, its light cast a shining glint on the thing. The sky suddenly turned from midnight blue to violet and pink, and then it turned into the brightest red I had ever seen. The thing in the sky kept flying. Its sharp wings devoid of feathers cut through the expanse above my head, a spectre against the crimson sky. It kept getting bigger and bigger overhead. Its sound was the loudest and most profound sound I had ever heard in my life.

With a manic laugh, I jumped to my feet and stood and danced on that boat, crying and praising God. Heaven had come! Mother had surely heard my cries, and surely she had told the Creator to hear the pain of a child taken away from their mother. The flying thing—the angel!—flew overhead. Though it did not carry a trumpet, I saw that its body shone in metallic steel, perhaps even bronze or silver, just like what I had read from the Bible. It glided across the bloody sky, deafening me with its roar. I kept dancing and singing for joy, even until my foot got caught in the nets. I fell into the water, hitting my head hard against the wooden planks until my head spun with stars.

I couldn’t even find it in me to swim, just as my mother had taught me, for what was the point? Even as my heavy and exhausted body slowly drifted under the surface, the last thing my eyes gazed upon was the beautiful steel angel and the blood red sky. As the saltwater filled my ears and my eyes, I could no longer see or hear anything but the sea that was said to have blessed me. I smiled lazily, staring at the vision of my mother on that small but steady boat, her wet hair plastered to her face scrunched up in pain as she pushed and pushed until I came to be. And I breathed in the sea, opening my mouth like a newborn babe. I let the cool water fill my lungs, warming me up from the inside with ecstatic joy and excitement as my eyes turned crimson red like the sky.

With one last breath, bubbles floating in front of my face before disappearing upwards to the surface, I saw the red sky dancing with the blue-black of the sea. It swirled into the most beautiful and surreal painting that I was sure only the Creator could make. I smiled as I watched the sky and sea that was said to have blessed me, be finally at peace with no more warring between them. Overhead, the metal angel passed over the little island, leaving behind a loud rumbling and a cloud of smoke, surely on its way to warn the others that the end of times was near.

I saw Heaven was coming—my mother was coming—and I saw it with my own two eyes.

Epilogue:

A lazy drizzle fell against the roofs of Santo Domingo Church that cold February, oscillating between an hour or so of light steady downpour and periods of clear sky in between. Padre Salazar barely held back his disdain as the young man reached out to take his kaban which contained the last of the priest’s belongings from his cell. Just a copy of the Bible in both Spanish and Tagalog, an extra coat, and an alampay made from fine woven abaca and cotton. He was already in a bad mood since he was woken up by the blasted plane that he knew was destined for Manila that morning. No doubt that it was an accessory for the Yanks in order to draw oohs and ahhs from the natives, to lead the pitiful people of this country to sin and away from the path of the Lord. His chest heaved as another raspy cough escaped his sore throat. He waved away the young man’s concern with a dismissive shake of his head. He was an old, old man, and he was about to be replaced as punong kura of Basco, but he was far from a man on his deathbed. He didn’t need petty assistance, especially not from a Yank’s pet.

"Padre!" a woman’s voice called out to him. Padre Salazar turned and saw Aling Nena rushing over to him through the middle aisle, carrying a straw-weave bag on her arm and a look of worry on her plump face.

"The girl is gone now too!" Aling Nena exclaimed, immediately bowing her head as Padre Salazar placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "My Maria said that the hut was empty when she passed by, and the boat was nowhere to be found on shore."

She then pulled out a thick Bible and gave it to him, one that the old priest knew was the girl's. Upon a quick skim through, he stopped at a page in the book of Revelation that had messy scribbles and charcoal marks on the margins. When he saw unfamiliar words written in the girl's hand—Chaos, Gaia, Pan Gu, Tsinos—Padre Salazar snapped his eyes shut with a quiet growl, immediately crossing himself. Blasphemous teachings were one thing, but to mark the Bible with falsehoods from pagans? It was worse than Padre Salazar feared. Aling Nena could only respond by hastily copying the priest's example, muttering "Ay Dios mío."

The young man carrying Padre Salazar's kaban caught a glimpse of the scribbles, only half-aware of what the priest and Aling Nena were talking about. With a smile on his dimpled face, he said, "Ay, this belongs to the girl you mentioned, right? Such a curious mind, I see! She might like to see what's going on in the mainland today. Dapat lumuwas ka nang maaga, Padre. Today's the Manila Carnival Celebration. You could have seen history being made. Let me tell you, if there's one thing the Americans know how to do, it's handling those beauties, in sea or sky."

Padre Salazar fixed a withering glare at the young man, who (to his credit) didn't shy away or avert his eyes. Perhaps it was because he knew that the old man was a product of his time, that this era of change did not come easily for someone as conservative as he was. The priest replied, "I may be old, but I know my duty, hijo. It is to teach my flock of the news that surely will save their souls. We must not be blinded by our vanity and pride. It doesn't matter who rules this country—España or America. The Lord God reigns eternal, and we must not stray from His teachings."

He then thrust an accusatory finger at the child’s Bible. He said, "Nothing good ever comes out of reading and knowing these things! It is only the Lord’s word that we should heed, and those that crave knowledge beyond His teachings are blinded by pride! Like how God struck down the Tower of Babel when humans wanted to reach Heaven, He shall strike down the monstrosities born from the human vanity to fly!" With that, Padre Salazar marched out the cathedral and into the kalesa that would take him to the boats to the mainland.

As he sat inside the kalesa, Padre Salazar continued skimming through the child’s Bible, and he shook his head grimly, casting his eyes to the heavens. The young man had caught up and had taken his place at the driver’s seat after placing the last of the priest’s kaban with its companions at the trunk. With a "hyah!" the driver spurred the horse on. Padre Salazar cast his gaze up the reddish sky, watching as raindrops fell steadily onto the ground. He closed his eyes and sent a quick prayer up, feeling a bit guilty for not succeeding in teaching the girl and her mother from straying from the path of the Lord.

But what could a single man like him do when that mysterious woman was hell bent on getting all those blasphemous books from the Yanks? For all he knew, the woman could have employed whatever tactics she could; Perhaps she had used her womanly wiles to enslave and gayuma whoever had a pretty coin and a pretty book. Maybe she even shared their blood. After all, her nose bridge was higher than the indios, and her skin was lighter. If he didn’t know any better, Padre Salazar would have thought she was a mestiza, or a hispana Filipina, except she clearly didn’t display the good behaviours befitting a Christian woman.

Still, he did his duty the best he could. May God have mercy on the woman and her child, wherever they are right now. Padre Salazar then placed the missing girl’s Bible on the seat. Then he pulled out a copy of the newspaper Renacimiento Filipino. His scowl only deepened even more as his Spanish tongue clumsily tried to sound out the American words that accompanied the photograph of that metal contraption that signalled the end of an era. It carried one name that no one in the island knew, as foreign and mysterious as the woman who was said to be the daughter of both the sea and the sky, and the woman’s daughter who disappeared undercover of the twilight morn: the 1911 Shriver’s Skylark.