La Anitera

The moon hangs low over the virgin blackness of the September night and grazes over the heads of trees lining the street of Elias Angeles. Its sharp blade plays strange images at the woman’s fertile mind; a sharp-edged sickle for a pagan rite of sacrifice. Closing her eyes to extinguish the thought, the drone of prayers from the nearby cathedral floods her. It is the feast of the Lady of Peñafrancia, the ninth and last day of the novena and already she is full of wicked auguries!

Tomorrow, hundreds of men, intoxicated by days of wine and beer will try to touch the virgin’s golden image; a trophy of masculinity, worthy to be retold for a generation. The little black virgin, helpless in a sea of raucous men

“The city will not sleep tonight,” she thinks to herself. “They are either in prayer or in sin, but in any way, questions will be raised by the drunkenness of prayer and wine.” She glances at the sickle-moon with contempt and a half-second veneration, before sliding the large window checkered with square capiz shells, closing it with one, final reverential bow.

“Must we do this Rodel?” turning now to a thin, handsome man, who has already slumped at her father’s favorite couch looking comfortable.

“Hnh?”

“Must we do this still?”

“You have to speak louder Mara, I’m watching TV,” says him and casually flicked the remote control to change the channel.

Impatiently, she grabs the remote control from his hand and turns the television off. For the third time she asks tersely, “must we do this?”

“Do what Mara?” he asks back sounding more brusque at the most recent harassment of his space and will. “Don’t tell me we’re having those irksome dialogues again about your, how did you describe it again, ah, ‘disdain’ and ‘scorn’ of these festivities? I told you, traditions are, we must not reason for or against it. So, can I have back the remote now?”

Still in front of the dead TV and with hands on her hips, she looks at Rodel with outstretched arms begging for the remote controller. If only you can beg for other things. She thought secretly.

As though the night, mixed with a thousand hail mary’s, commanded it, she gracefully, like one fluid act, seats at the floor and leans her head at Rodel’s right thigh. Not knowing the battle within her, he takes delight at the sudden mood shift and strokes her hair.

He smiles mischievously and quickly erases it off his face and looks at the closed capiz window as if he can see right through the shells and trees, and see the sharp sickle-moon hanging at the night sky.

“You know,” he begins. “My Bisayan mother hated this festival. Not that she hates the virgin, she hates the way the Bikolanos revere her. Oh, she was a devotee! I can say she worships the virgin mother as equal to Jesus! But she hated how these people would hold processions trying to get anything from her – flowers, thread, and cloth, from the image. Ai! She told me she did not eat the fiesta meal after seeing the procession for the first time.” He laughs at his own story while still holding Mara’s hair.

“But –“

“I don’t know why,” he cuts Mara whose mouth was still hanging in mid-thought, “my Inay never prayed with the women of the church. I guess she was afraid they’d learn she left her lover in Bohol and brought a fatherless child to Naga to live with her sister. Nevertheless, she prayed to the same virgin of Peñafrancia in her little altar at our room and prayed the same novena at the week-long festival. But never did she watch again the traslacion and fluvial procession. So I guess I understand you Mara.”

Yes she heard the story, but not from him, this was the first time he said that. Her tita told her about the gossips among the old women of the church. How Rodel’s mother was ostracized in Bohol because she was a witch and that she mothered the Archbishop's son. Tales that left her laughing at the sheer impossibility of those gossips, reminding her of Rizal’s Maria Clara or some cheesy soap opera.

“You haven’t told me that story.”

“But I have to tell you this. The wedding is in three days! You don’t want to marry a man with a skeleton on his closet!” and he laughs his full drunkard’s laugh. Mara thought the table has turned; she was the one confessing tonight not Rodel! Let him talk first.

“My mother is a witch.”

“Haha! Really funny. Did she leave you her broom on her will? Haha!” So he heard the gossips then. Poor Rodel.

“Seriously Mara,” he points at his face which caught the right light from the other room, making him more princely and mystical, “this is the serious face.”

“Okaayyy… go on.”

“The people call her ANITERA in Bohol. I was ten years old so I remember quite well when my Uncle stormed in our house one night and told us to pack our clothes and that we are going to Bikol, to her sister’s house, the one who married the local lawyer. I could not understand the haste to pack our things and the look of fear on my Uncle’s and mother’s faces we a puzzle. I caught words like ‘Kristong Hari Kulto’ and ‘salakay’ and only now I understand that the local fundamentalist sect was trying to kill my mother or at least exile her. A witch! She is an Anitera, Mara – a priestess of the Anitos.”

There was a lacuna of silence. A searing gap that seems to echo his last word. And then a voice:

“How sure are you about that?” Mara asks with an audible trace of doubt.

“Once, when were still in Bohol, I woke up to the sound of screaming. I went out of my room and followed the screeching and wailing of women until I found myself in our yard where the kubo is. There was my mother and a woman shrilling and bellowing animal noises, clawing at the two men, who restrain her. My mother was not there, she was another being entirely. The being did not see me creep among the mango trees. She was radiant or something, or maybe it was just my eyes fresh from the dark of sleep. She was speaking in another language –like bubbling water or something. She raised a handful of leaves dripping with water or oil and then rubs them on the woman. I don’t know what happened next because my uncle caught me and gave me a spanking inside the house. The next time was when I was fifteen, here in Naga. I saw her naked kneeling in front the biggest full moon I’ve ever seen, and drawing a circle with salt around her. By that time, I barely knew her. I was afraid of her.”

Mara notices the trembling hands of Rodel still stroking her hair and holds them. Soothing them the best way she knows how: she kisses them. And there was a long, pregnant and miraculously comfortable silence as if they are still talking in their heads.

I am even afraid of your own womanhood Mara. Every woman is an Anitera, guardians of the earth that is also their body. But I love you truthfully and must tell you my deepest secret and fear. I must open my heart to let you in but I must veil the fear I have of your own connectedness with your mother moon. I must place the ring on your finger, that remnant of a chain, and quell your womanhood with marriage.

I AM an Anitera Rodel, can’t you see? Every woman is. Must we still go on with the marriage? The ring is a remnant of a chain. But I love you fully, if only you know; Woman will not hurt you twice, love. The Anitera will be wed.

And there in the drunkenness of prayer and wine, the sharp sickle-moon which grazes over the heads of trees lining the street of Elias Angeles, has done the ancient rite of sacrifice and left with her consort clouds.