II
Maria Segunda
“Love”
She kept staring at the young man, her husband’s son they named Bienvenido. The one everyone in Buhi fondly called Bien. The one whose past time is flirting with all the girls. The one who would rather gallivant than work on the land, or fight a war for his country, and die for it.
Maria Segunda kept telling herself that somehow, he has features like her. He looks very much like his half-Chinese father Modesto. But somehow, she is forcing herself to imagine that he somewhat has Agta features. She imagines that he has a flat nose but what she gets is a well-sculpted one. She forces a kinky hair to crown his head, but she is terribly disappointed that it is straight with a heavy dose of expensive pomade. Bienvenido has no Agta feature. Not a single tint of her being one. She blames herself for forcing the issue, for how can a mango tree bear an apple.
She gets frustrated when all she sees is a remnant of that Chinese coolie her hated mother-in-law married who now counts as the father of her husband. Don Procopio Contrada, her father-in-law, is one sad man imprisoned in the domineering embrace of his dictatorial and insufferable wife, the mother of her husband, the woman they call Donya Valentina. When she looks at him, what he sees is a deeply broken man whose heart has wandered away somewhere.
And such sadness is because of the woman he married, this woman the entire town call Donya Valentina. She hated this woman since the first time she met her. She can still smell and taste the disdain this woman showed towards her when Modesto brought her home.
“You brought shame to this family!,” she can still hear her tell Modesto in cold calculated voice. She did not scream or raise her voice. But she might as well have shouted because the absence of feelings made her even more despicable. “I thought you cannot disappoint me any further after you decided to enter the seminary to become a useless priest. And now, you left the seminary, but instead of becoming my eldest son who can manage our lands and the coprasan, you brought home a flat-nosed, ugly Agta woman. And not only that, a married one with two children she left behind.”
People of Buhi feared her. This Donya Valentina. And they hated her even more. They call her Donya both as an honorific, and an insult. But not her. She only hated her, but she doesn’t fear her.
“What kind of woman would do that?,” the Donya asked as she looked at her with insulting eyes.
She wanted to fight back. She wanted to tell her that she, Maria Modesta Igat, is but Donya Valentina’s nightmare to remind her that she is not the only woman who is in control of her life. They are on the same boat. Except that she is better than her.
“And dear God, Modesto, She even has an ugly surname, Igat, that you cannot even replace with our own dignified name because no Church in this town or in this planet would consent to you getting married. You will live in perpetual sin. Your children will be condemned as bastards. Por Dios y por Santo. You will burn in hell.” She continued speaking in an almost monotonous way, devoid of any palpable anger, but still as hateful.
Don Procopio Contrada was just standing by, silently, watching his wife unleash pure, cold, unadulterated abuse toward his eldest son and her de facto bride. He was being his usual, spineless, powerless self.
Maria Segunda knows Procopio’s story. This is why she is tempted to tell Donya Valentina that in fact, they have the same fate. They are both strong women who are perceived by weak people as living in sin. Except she has an edge. For Maria Segunda, being in a loveless marriage is as sinful as adultery. Denying her husband love, and inflicting cruelty on those around her is as sinful. At least, in her case, she is cohabiting with a man she loves, and who she knows truly love her back. After all, Modesto left the seminary to be with her, and she left a husband and two children to be with him. But the Donya may have the power from her vast lands, but she has no one who loves her. Not even her son.
The first time she met Modesto was in the banks of the lake in her native Tambo, a village on the western side of Lake Buhi. She can still vividly remember his naked, mestizo body bathing in the lake with his seminarian friends, unaware of her presence. As an Agta woman, she always fantasized marrying a mestizo, but ended up in an arranged marriage with another Agta, one with whom she bore two children, but nevertheless is unable to love. Trapped in an obliged, loveless marriage, watching this lanky, mestizo masculinity in all its nakedness stirred something inside her. And it is not just libido. Her heart fluttered. She knew there was something special burning inside her.
She once asked Modesto what made him fall in love with her too.
“It is because you remind me of my mother. You embody her strength. Her power. You cannot allow the world to tell you what to do.” He said this and she cringed. She was so offended she wanted to slap him. But what he said after dissolved whatever irritation she felt at being compared to a woman she hates. “But you are also not her. Unlike her, you respect me. And more than anything else, you are capable of loving me. All she cared about was her land and her power.”
Modesto and Maria Segunda instantly fell in love. It was in that exact moment when Modesto saw her staring at his naked body on the banks of the lake, this native woman with a flat nose that amplified her natural and raw beauty. They are a portrait of contrast. His tall whiteness towered over her brown shortness. When he asked her to pass to him his clothes, she playfully refused. She wouldn’t miss the chance of spending more time gazing at his nakedness. She was unmindful of the teasing from Modesto’s friends who were as naked as him, but she did not even bother to glance at them. Her eyes were fixed on the Chinese mestizo.
Maria Segunda is a woman who knew what she wanted. And her being married and a mother to two did not prevent her from loving another man. Her marriage, and the obligatory child-bearing that came with it were so structured as part of being an Agta woman, one where love has no place to grow. For her, it is almost like she was no different from a female dog, a breeder of puppies, except for the ritual of marriage. She remembered the day when her parents and the parents of Igmedio, her Agta husband, decided their marriage, without asking her if she wanted to. She knew the day would come, and was prepared for it, just like any Agta girl in her village. They are possessions. But the feeling when her mother told her about the arrangement was nevertheless as painful, as it was suffocating. At that moment she felt she died. She ran to the lakeshore at the same spot that years later she would find herself marveling at the naked body of a Chinese mestizo bathing in the lake with his friends. That spot is where she vowed to herself she will get away and find her life and flee this place she could never call home. And that image she saw both embodied the freedom she dreamt of and the man she instantly desired.
She fell in love with Modesto. She looked at him and saw a man who can rescue her from the prison of a loveless marriage she found herself trapped. When Modesto saw her, she saw a woman who can truly love him. Both of them knew the feeling because they have been dreaming and obsessing about it. Modesto craved for maternal love that his mother cannot give. Maria Segunda dreamt of love that her tribe has denied its women to experience when they are forced into loveless marriages.
She felt Modesto was not a stranger, that she told him her story when he asked her if he can walk her home. She was honest and brutally frank and forthcoming. It was the most liberating thing she did. “You can because I like you. But you have to know something about me. I have a husband I do not love. And I have two children I was obliged to have. I can see you like me too. But do you like me enough to take me away from them so that I can truly experience love and have children not out of duty but because we will love each other?”
Modesto, at that moment, saw raw beauty and power but so unlike the kind her mother Donya Valentina had brutally inflicted to emasculate the men around her, most especially his father, and him. Maria Segunda was giving him a choice. And he took the one he knew would displease her mother, for nothing can please him more than to displease his mother. Her mother would be threatened by the sight of her son loving and being loved by a woman as beautiful and as fiercely independent as the feared Donya Valentina of Buhi.
Maria Segunda and Modesto walked toward her hut determined to break off both of their bondage – she from a loveless marriage, and he from a loveless mother. Modesto decided that Maria Segunda trumps priesthood. With her, he would have children that he can truly care and love. He can show her imperious mother that there is more to give to children other than material inheritance.
And there they were standing, Igmedio and Maria Segunda’s two children, waiting in front of the hut made of nipa, more like a lean-to than a house. Maria Segunda whispered to her husband. “I am leaving you and the children so that I can become myself, and become what I want to be. If and when I succeed, I will come back for them. I am now setting you free to be with a woman who will be happy just being your wife and mother of your children. I am not that woman. I want more.”
Modesto was expecting Igmedio to react violently, and the children to cry and cling to their mother. He was surprised they didn’t. Igmedio took it calmly. The children just stared at their mother with blank faces. Perhaps, indeed there was no love in this family to give and share, that a wife leaving her husband and a mother abandoning her children are received with quiet relief, with a sense of liberation.
As they were about to leave the place, an old woman stood in front of Maria Segunda. Her mother’s face was the one filled with anger and spite. This woman whose life was defined as a mere duty would rather have her own daughter follow her footsteps. She looked at Modesto, as she spoke to her daughter with much pain. “You are leaving your husband and children for this man you do not even know the truth about.”
She was tempted to answer her mother. She wanted to tell her that the truth is not just about familiarity but about living a full life with people, one that was denied from her, the same one that was denied from her mother, and from the mother before her. All they knew was duty to tradition, but not to real persons.
Her mother went on. “Do you know who his mother is? You are running away with a man whose mother is well known in the entire town for her cruelty. A usurious bitch who steals husbands and sons to work for her, in lands that she likewise stole from people like us.”
For some women, such dire words of warning would have struck fear. But not Maria Segunda. She is looking forward to doing battle with this woman feared and loathed by the people of Buhi, and with a son who would hate her enough for him to leave the seminary to run away with a married Agta with two children like her.
“Goodbye mother,” Maria Segunda said to the now agitated woman. “Please take care of the children.”
“What about your clothes? Aren’t you taking any?,” Modesto asked as they were leaving.
“I don’t have any worth wearing in front of your mother. We will pass by the Centro for you to buy me new clothes.”
And from that day onwards Maria Segunda lived a life she never had since birth. She is now with a man who truly, and instantly, loves him, and who she, instantly, loved back. He gifted her not only with new clothes but with a new life that not many Agta women would have. She gifted her with children, this time born not out of duty but out of genuine affection.
But the best part of all is that she was able to be victorious over the nasty bitch that was her mother-in-law. She trashed her in her own game, not with cruelty but with tenacity in managing the affairs of her family. Donya Valentina grudgingly recognized that she finally met her match. Maria Segunda was not just an astute home manager. Her Agta blood gifted her with the natural talent to run the lands Donya Valentina owned and made them productive beyond her wild imaginations, even surpassing her. She was able to even hire all the Agta men from her entire village in Tambo and neighboring Cabatuan, including her first husband, who now took a second wife. And as she promised, she took back her two children and have them work as helpers in the big house of the Contradas.
But more than this, she is a good wife to Modesto and a good mother to her children, something Donya Valentina never was.
Yes. Children. The source of Maria Segunda’s joy. But also the source of her greatest pain.
And this is the unpleasant thought that kept forcing itself into her mind as she was staring at Bienvenido, or Bien who looked very much like his father, and nothing like her.
And she remembered the day she discovered that Modesto had another woman from Iraya, at the other eastern of the lake opposite her home barrio of Tambo. It was one of the moments that almost crushed her.
It was an irony that the only source of solace she had at the time was from her mother-in-law who tutored her on how to deal with men in love with other women. Donya Valentina was a veteran in this aspect of life.
“All men are weak. That is why I never loved anyone of them. I would rather kiss and make love with the land,” Donya Valentina told her with her classic monotonous voice that once irritated her but now somewhat gave her comfort. “We the Contrada women should always lift them up. You are a Contrada woman now. Act like how a Contrada woman should act.”
A part of Maria Segunda blamed herself. She must have been so preoccupied with making the land productive to beat her mother-in-law in her own game, to show her that she is better, that she ended up neglecting Modesto’s needs. She realized the irony of letting her mother-in-law be the cause once again of ruining Modesto’s happiness, and she even took part in it. A part of her also thought that she is now being punished for leaving her first husband and abandoning her two children with him. And even if she took them back, she has turned them into farmhands and house helpers. She was horrified to realize that she has somewhat become just like Donya Valentina as she sucks love away from the people around her.
She decided she will regain control. That she would be different.
And it happened one night as a fierce tribunada raged outside. With the flickering lights of the gasera serving as a backdrop to the thunder and lightning playing outside, what has become a shadow puppet imagery captured the moment. An animated Maria Segunda was seen as the image of a woman scorned. Unlike her mother-in-law who calmly took the news of her husband having a first wife, Maria Segunda will never settle with having another woman to be her husband’s second.
“You will leave her. Forget about her. You will never have a son with her, ever! I will make sure of that!” These were the words Maria Segunda forced into her husband’s memory.
The next day, Maria Segunda bid Modesto goodbye and asked him to take care of their two sons Joaquin and Anselmo. It was almost like the scene when she left Igmedio and their two children. And just like the first time, she promised to be back, for the children. But unlike then, she did not set Modesto free to be with the other woman. Over her dead body that would happen.
And the Contrada household saw the absence of Maria Segunda for nine months. No one knew where she was. And no one was saying anything.
After nine months, Maria Segunda indeed came back. But she did not come back alone. She came back with a baby boy in her arms. “Joaquin. Anselmo. This is Bienvenido. Your brother,” she told her two sons. And as Modesto came out of their room, she approached him and handed the baby boy to him. “This is your son.”
Modesto took the baby boy, kissed him and cuddled him as he looked east toward Iraya. He looked at his wife, wondering. “She is my son. I was pregnant when I left. Let people know that.” And he understood. In pain, he understood.
Maria Segunda took care of Modesto’s son. She nursed and nourished him. And the women of Buhi, who were wondering where she was for the past nine months finally had their answer. She went away to give birth. What the gossips couldn’t understand and kept asking was why did she had to leave to give birth to her third son. Only Maria Segunda would know the answer. And she is not telling.
That son is now eighteen, the de facto eldest now that the brutal war has claimed Anselmo and Joaquin. All she had left are the memories when she last saw them as they kissed her before they boarded the jeep to begin the long journey to their deaths at the hands of the invading Japanese somewhere in Bataan. It pained her that their bodies were never found. Not even their dog tags. Maria Segunda was inconsolable. She repeatedly ran to the Tabao river to drown herself, this while her two Agta children would run after her to stop her, while Bienvenido would dismiss this as one of her mother’s theatrics.
Maria Segunda wanted to love Bienvenido the same way she loved her two dead sons, this young man she is now staring it as he was lying in that abaca hammock. He is the symbol of being carefree, even uncaring of the pain she felt when his brothers died in the unlamented war. He looked very much like her husband, his father, the first time she saw him bathing in the lake. As she kept staring at Bienvenido, she hated the fact that there is nothing in him that looked like her. A part of her wished that it was him who joined the war, and not her two eldest sons. He has brought her nothing but headache, like now when she learned that he has set his eyes on a farmer’s daughter, an unschooled lass from Santa Justina named Honorata Tercero she accidentally met as they hid under a papag in the marketplace during an air raid by the Japanese.
Donya Valentina, now sickly and old, sat in her rocking chair. In her usual monotonous voice, she whispered to Maria Segunda. “There are many secrets in this family.” She pointed her lips toward the young man the girls in Buhi flirted with and called Bien, and said, “That young man over there …”
“Don’t!” Maria Segunda hushed her mother-in-law.
The aging matriarch guffawed, then looked at her, partly teasing, partly chastising. “I kept telling you. Men in this family are weak. It is us the Contrada women who will bear their burden.”
Both women would soon know that much of that burden is about to be borne by that farmer’s daughter from Santa Justina named Honorata.
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