Bathala: a Biomythography pt. 1 by Scott Ortega-Nanos

Today is the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It’s a time when Catholic families come together, to honor the sacred birth of Mary herself, who is said to have been born without sin. It is also said that Mary, so full of grace, never sinned once, in her entire life. According to Catholic history, Jesus died on the cross to save the souls of everyone, because everyone needed to be saved. Everyone—Norma laughed to herself—except for his dear nanay.

Norma loves her nanay too, but she’s especially fond of her father. Tatay Gerardo has always had a fierce, lifelong devotion to the Blessed Mother, and even custom designed a statue of Her, with an ivory head and hands which could be removed, manipulated, and then re-affixed in order to mirror the spirits of different holidays. Tonight, Norma and Tatay will pray to the statue together, and prepare it for the festival mass.

*** After lunch, Norma boards a train bound for Los Banos, Laguna; her home. Los Banos is only 50miles south of the capital, but trains move slow, and the track is winding, built wherever a path was available; sometimes wedged tightly in between rows of shanties, other times, slapped together over deep ravines, where the rail groans and shivers, and one can reach out and almost touch the tops of palm trees. The air is hot and damp, heavy with yesterday’s rainfall. Norma drifts off into sleep.

When she wakes from her dream, the train is already close to Los Banos Laguna Station. It’s late afternoon, and she can see the golden strands of sunlight lying gently across the crown of Mount Makiling. The mountain, said to be the home of the goddess Maria Makiling, is actually a large, dormant volcano, and provides the village with several natural hot springs. In the dream, a few moments earlier, Norma was riding in the same train, but fully awake. And as the north face of Mount Makiling first came into view, the train rumbled and screeched, and the earth shook and trembled. In the distance, Norma saw the entire mountain and rainforest rise effortlessly off the ground, held up by a pair of enormous legs. A tall woman’s body, made of miles (and miles) of mountain, towered above the clouds; and then, bent down.

Suddenly, a massive pair of eyes with pupils of swirling opal peered into the window of the train car, and Norma found herself face to face with a giant woman, far older than her lelang, with skin of dark brown rock; each wrinkle in her crow’s nest: a deep canyon, out of which toppled heaps of dirt, leaves, and rainwater. The large woman’s face smiled serenely at Norma, and then changed, or rather, slowly flickered. The jagged and weathered brown rock turned to smooth obsidian, and the towering figure appeared wrapped, for a moment, in a cosmic robe, the glittering dark purple of space. The faces of Maria Makiling and the Virgin Mary switched back and forth, and the crystal eyes began to cry: first tears, then blood, then rubies, ginger root, gold dust, and back to tears again, over and over. Finally, the cavernous mouth opened, and the giant woman began to speak ...

A transient chill breaks Norma away from the recollection, and banishes it to a place she can no longer grasp. Staring out the window, watching the sunlight retract into nothingness, she reaches into her pocket, and clutching her rosary, fades into prayer.

The next 24 hours pass in traditional fashion. The mass the following day is solemn and God-fearing; the warm sound of whispered prayers thickens the air inside the church, supported by a low, steady hum of several hundred hand fans, each one being waved, meditatively and unceasingly. The feast, following the mass, is delicious and vibrant. The evening is full of its usual decorum, which Norma simply lives for; the men in the village all line up to greet her Tatay, and leave offerings for the statue. Her sisters, Baby and Wenny, starved for the latest gossip from the city, trail behind her closely as she tracks down lelang and the other village elders, eager to give each one their mano po. The party drags on, and the younger villagers dance and drink well into the night.

But in an instant, everything stops, precipitated by the forced cadence of music being turned off midphrase, followed by silence, and then, the voice of an American man, speaking English. Norma can understand what the man on the radio is saying. But yet she cannot understand; she cannot believe it.

Arvin, one of Tatay’s students at the University, translates out loud in Tagalog for the rest of the village to hear.

There is no more feast. There is no more dancing. The man on the radio repeats: the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. Norma shuts her eyes in shock. After a moment, she reopens them, and realizes that not everything is how it was before, how it’s always been. There are Japanese soldiers scattered along the street, leaning against walls with polished assault rifles slung across their shoulders. The buildings they’re guarding are newly remodeled, with painted signs in Kanji. Something is happening here, too.

The next morning, Tatay Gerardo forbids Norma to go back to school, and the following week passes in a fog. There are daily air raids in Manila; the bombs are dropped midday. A sea of weary, blunted faces pours into the small village from the train station: desperate families, fleeing a burning city. The town swells from the influx of people. The order of things becomes a veil. One morning, while at the market, Norma sees her favorite clothes, left behind at school, for sale on a merchant’s table. Sobbing, she runs home, warm tears streaming down her face, too ashamed to tell anyone that she cannot afford to buy them back.