When the Elephants Dance (7 page)

She always lighted three candles as the sky blushed good night to the sun. Then she would take out her scented sticks, traded from a Chinese client. Our rooms would fill with the scents of jasmine, cinnamon, coconut. She kept a gossamer sheet pinned to her window; it was much finer than the coarse ones we had to keep the mosquitoes out. The sheet rippled in the breeze and made her seem all the more a dream to me.

I remember the last week before her disappearance so clearly. I can remember indelibly every customer she prescribed a potion for and every word that was said. That Monday, her week started out so promising. Her first customer made my eyes pop, for it was not often I saw a senator’s wife come to our part of town.

The senator’s wife was named Aling Sofie; she had two perfect children and a house on the ocean with a private dock for their many boats. I could not imagine what ailment she would have. A sick child, I decided.

I must tell you now, the things I saw and heard were not always for a child to witness. But back then, I never considered myself a child. Someone who has to lie and steal time in order to go to the beach and play with friends is no longer a child.

Aling Sofie seemed embarrassed. Her body was closed in. The tight bun of her hair pulled the corners of her eyes back, giving her skin a painful pretense of youth. Her arms were folded tightly against her chest as she paced the floor. Esmeralda sat with her hands folded on the oval table, next to a turquoise-colored vase filled with pink lotus blossoms. She waited serenely for Aling Sofie to be seated.

“Perhaps this is a mistake.” Aling Sofie’s brow wrinkled. “I just had nowhere to go. I have heard you are very confidential. I thought—” She lifted her hand and let it fall. All this time she spoke as if to the floor, her eyes not meeting Esmeralda’s.

Esmeralda lit a short candle the color of ginger, then poured a cup of tea. “Please, you have come a long way. Have a cup before you go.” She extended her slender fingers to the empty chair.

Aling Sofie sat down with a big sigh that rolled onto the table. I think the sound of it surprised even her. “My husband wishes to do things in bed that I cannot—Improper things. I am too old for such things.” She laughed nervously and glanced up at Esmeralda. “And for a senator’s wife to comply … The mother of his children. Preposterous. I have an image to uphold in the community. It is expected of me. He clings to the past, to when we were younger.”

Esmeralda stood and took down a small glass container with tiny pieces of tree bark and violet petals floating inside. “Give me your hands.”

“Such a pretty concoction,” Aling Sofie said, intrigued. She held out her hands.

When the bottle was uncorked, the scent of sunlight and the ocean filled the room. Esmeralda rubbed the lotion onto Aling Sofie’s hands and dropped a few petals onto the opened palms. “Mm, I see …” Esmeralda nodded thoughtfully, then closed her eyes.

“What, what is it?” Aling Sofie searched her own hand as if these things would reveal themselves to her.

“I see you with your hair long and flowing. You wore your hair this way when you were younger?”

“Yes, yes.” Aling Sofie became excited.

Esmeralda frowned. “No, no. Perhaps I have called the wrong image. That girl could not be you.”

“Oh, but it is. Look, see?” Aling Sofie’s fingers fluttered quickly behind her head, and her dark hair fell about her like a cloud. The face relaxed.

“Ahh, of course. It was you, after all. Here.” Esmeralda plucked a lavender orchid from one of her bowls on the table. “Let us complete the picture, so that I have a better vision.” She placed the orchid behind Aling Sofie’s ear, then leaned back with a look of surprise. “Why, it is as if ten years have dropped from your shoulders. Why is it you no longer wear your hair this way?”

“Well, it is so …”

“Lovely,” Esmeralda finished. “See?” She placed a small wooden mirror in Aling Sofie’s hands. The frame was painted blue with clouds on the top and vines around the edges. I had seen that mirror many times. I called it the dream mirror.

Aling Sofie’s eyes grew wistful, and a small smile teased the corners of her lips. She brought one of her wrists to her nose. “Such a sweet fragrance.”

“These things your husband wishes you to do?” Esmeralda prompted.

Aling Sofie’s face puckered immediately, as if she had tasted a dried prune. “I feel silly. I cannot …” She paused. “He wishes me to dance, to undress myself, to wear feathers. To tickle him with
puca
shells.”

“Ah, things you’ve never done before. So he suddenly changed, wanted these extravagant things? Things only a beautiful wild temptress would think of. Where did he get such ideas?”

“Well …” Aling Sofie’s face grew red. Her eyes looked mischievously into the candle flickering on the table. “Still, it would not be proper. A woman of my standing in the community. It is not acceptable.”

“I see, you have a great dilemma. But one easily cured.”

“Yes?” Aling Sofie asked.

Esmeralda stood and took down a very dusty bottle. The bottle had a brass stopper with two snakes rising up intertwined. She eyed Aling Sofie, then blew off the dust. “I must have your word. You must not let it be known that I have this. It will ruin everything. Too many women would want it. Ahh, perhaps I am being reckless, let us try something else.” Esmeralda put the bottle back on the shelf.

“No. How much?” Aling Sofie stood, her chair falling back at the force of her desire.

“A small donation, but only after your first use of it. I am not allowed to keep the money if it does not work. And I have not used this since … well. Since the first woman died.”

Aling Sofie pulled back the money she held in her outstretched hand. “A woman died from this?”

Esmeralda threw back her luxurious hair and laughed. “Oh no, no. Quite the opposite. A woman
lived
because of this. Oh, how she lived. This potion belonged to Lualhatte and only to her. While she lived I could not allow another woman to use it. It is that way with these things; only one person can use it.”

“Lualhatte Cordoba? The descendant of the great Chief Kabo? They say she could seduce any man, even up to her death at the age of one hundred and two last year.”

Esmeralda’s lids lowered knowingly.

“No.” Aling Sofie’s eyes watched the bottle hungrily. “At that age she was still …” She paused. “Active?”

“Candle wax and rambutan were her bedroom tools,” Esmeralda whispered, winking at the name of the egg-shaped fruit with reddish hairy skin.

“Oh my.” Aling Sofie giggled.

“Your feathers and
puca
shells no longer sound so bad, hah?”

“Does this potion have any adverse effects?” Aling Sofie asked, but I could see that this was merely a formality. Her eyes had already bought the potion.

“Its only drawback is if used too much, it can make the woman a little bit, well, overly … sexed,” Esmeralda whispered.

Aling Sofie shook her head to throw back her hair, in imitation of Esmeralda. She giggled. Already her voice was deeper in tone, her eyes half-closed.

“This bottle was found buried in a cave, the final resting place of a queen, whose name I am not allowed to speak. This queen, she was a legendary temptress.

“This potion allows the user to change her identity in private, to draw on the charms of this queen. But, as I said, one word to anyone that you have this in your possession and I will no longer be allowed to give it to you. I have your word of silence?” At Aling Sofie’s nod, Esmeralda took a few drops from the bottle into a very tiny vial and gave it to her.

Aling Sofie took out a few pesos. “I know you said pay later, but this is just for your time. Take it.” She winked at Esmeralda and then left the house. I watched as Aling Sofie descended the steps with light feet. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and pulled her hair up into a loose bun. A secret smile grew on her lips, her hips swayed, and her hands swung freely at her side.

Esmeralda waited until Aling Sofie disappeared around a corner, then she took the snake bottle, added a few more purple petals and plain water from a pitcher. She dipped her hand in a tin filled with powder, sprinkled it on the bottle to give it a dusty effect, then replaced it at the back of her shelf.

After Aling Sofie, a gambling man arrived. I had seen him before, always dressed in such fine woman-catching attire. He wore wide-brimmed straw hats and polished black Western shoes. He pulled out the chair and sat down before being asked. He lit a big cigar that smoked up the room and caused my eyes to water even at my hidden distance.

“I want a cure for my wife’s petty jealousies. They cause her to commit crimes against my mistresses.” He puffed big circles of smoke as he talked.

“Go on,” Esmeralda answered, poised as ever.

“She cannot control herself. Perhaps something to calm the nerves, eh? Surely you have something of this kind in one of your lovely bottles, eh,
maganda?”
The man asked, calling her beautiful. “My wife is very good with dramatics. She should have joined the theater, or the circus.” The man slapped the table, causing Esmeralda’s candle to flicker and the flower bowl to tip. He caught the bowl, frowning at it. “But truthfully, I am worried about her. I am not without heart. I cannot look aside as my poor wife is in such apparent misery.
Oh, you should see her. She pulls out her hair. She carries on so. Each time we pass these women in the streets she wants to scratch their eyes out and boil them for my dinner. She has told me this! Can you imagine the embarrassment these scenes cost me? One of my mistresses has already threatened to stop seeing me.”

Esmeralda received many customers like this man, always thinking the cure lay in the curing of others, never themselves. She gave him a bottle of soothing oils, then instructed him to send his wife over. The woman came in bent over like a fragile tree broken from a strong northern wind. Do you know, that woman’s spine began to grow after each visit? Within days she stood straight and tall like a bamboo pole.

The man returned three days later demanding his money back. He claimed the sessions had not cured her at all; instead they had made his wife crazy. She defied his every command, until finally he’d come home to a note one day that said simply, “You are not worth one more grain of my strength, not one more tear from my eye. I am leaving you.”

There were many others. A Swedish surgeon with clumsy hands and a fear of the dark. A young girl who had not spoken since her mother had confessed to being in love with the neighbor’s wife. A woman who wanted her daughter to become an opera singer, where obviously the girl had no talent, but the mother, ahh, what a voice. They all came secretly disguised in hooded coats or high collars with big hats.

It was around closing time one evening when one of the nuns visited Esmeralda. It was Sister Mildred, the one who had discovered her as an infant in the church garden. In fact, it was just about the time the opera hopeful and her mother had departed. Sister Mildred moved aside to let the two women pass, then gave Esmeralda a daunting look.

“Ah, Esmeralda, you play with their hopes and fears. Things they should be confessing only to Padre Ramirez. He is the only one with a direct line to God.” She made the sign of the cross when she said this. “This is a dangerous thing you do.”

“I merely give them freedom to be themselves. I encourage them to speak their deepest desires.” Esmeralda shrugged as she put away her jars.

“Are you listening to yourself? You speak as if you were chosen by the Almighty Himself. A kind of saint, is that what you are?” Sister Mildred picked off a piece of lint from her dark robe and smoothed the fabric before placing her pale hands on the table. “Well, let me tell you now, you are not. Would a saint be left on the church doorsteps unwanted? A product of the deepest of sins, I am certain.

“Haven’t I told you to pray for forgiveness? For yourself, and especially for your parents, who I am sure tried to do right by you. You have a responsibility to correct their wrong. It was not a mistake that they left you on the church doorstep. Their intent was obvious; they wanted you to live a life of holiness. Nor is it a mistake that I found you. I am to be your teacher in this life. Your life was entrusted to me. Therefore, as I have told you countless times, you have an obligation to redeem yourself and your parents’ souls by giving your life to the church. Now then, have you said your rosary for the evening?”

“No, sister.” Esmeralda bowed her head.

“Sin clings strongly to you. Lend me some of your lotion. My hands grow dry from this weather. Not that one, the other. The one that smells of flowers. Now let us pray.”

I fell asleep listening to their “Hail Mary, full of grace …” and the responding “Holy Mary, mother of God” echoed in my dreams.

A
ND NOW
I must tell you about Sister Mildred, for as I said, it was she who found Esmeralda as an infant in the church garden. The church took the baby in, of course. It was a gift from God. And not one person questioned who the mother could be. They decided that it must have been a passing traveler. They never questioned the extra weight that Sister Mildred lost soon after Esmeralda was found. And who would notice any weight at all? Those hideous gowns covered so much of their bodies, and the long wooden crucifixes swung menacingly before them, to chase the curious eyes away. Not one person grasped the reason for Sister Mildred’s brooding moods, how she would live between moments of serene reverence and hellish despair. The infant Esmeralda eclipsed all that surrounded them.

T
HAT EVENING AFTER
all her customers had come and gone, I woke in time to see her last visitor. Her lover arrived. He was tall for a Filipino. His Spanish blood came through in his aquiline nose and languid strides. He was the Golden Gloves boxing champion of Blanca Negros, and his name was Tearso Batongbukol. I had seen him fight in the local boxing rings many times. He fought like a mountain lion, swift and ruthless. He was always immaculately dressed. Linen pants and loose cotton shirts with the sleeves rolled up were his usual attire. He never came without a gift, and they were always wrapped with ribbons. I once saw her open a delicate box that opened to reveal a smaller box, and on until she found a small white gold ring engraved with vines and one
beautiful pearl. Another time he brought a gilded cage with two yellow birds that nestled close to each other.