Wild Song, page 6
Tilin nudged me with her shoulder. ‘I can’t wait to see the ship!’
I looked at her. Her hair was whipping around her face, her cheeks were tinged with pink. Her excitement was infectious.
‘No more rice paddies to plant!’ I cried.
‘No more grain to thresh!’ Tilin giggled.
‘No more …’ I looked at her. ‘No more marrying people we don’t want to marry.’
We both shrieked with laughter. But Sidong tugged on my sleeve.
‘Don’t you love Samkad anymore, Luki?’ she said.
I threw my arms around her and gave her a squeeze. But I had no answer for her. Right now, all I wanted was to get on board the Shawmut.
‘America is going to be amazing, Luki,’ Tilin said dreamily, holding her arm out over the water to feel the cool sea breeze. ‘I know it!’
A huge wave. The boat rose up and then splashed down, and I realized that we had left the river behind. Gusts of wind dampened our faces with light sprays of sea water. We were in the ocean.
‘¡Allá! Ahí está vuestro barco,’ Johnny cried. ‘There it is!’
In the distance, almost where the sky touched the sea, stood the Shawmut, tall in the water, with steep black sides and a huge funnel. The swirling waves that had our little boat bouncing up and down had no effect on the great boat. It stood there, still as a rock.
We could see the steps suspended at a diagonal along the ship’s steep side. Ropes were thrown and tied, and soon our boat was fastened to the stairway.
Johnny held out his hand.
‘This is goodbye?’ Tilin said.
‘No, no!’ Johnny said. ‘The Constabulary Band is going to America too. But we are taking another ship. We will soon join you in Saint Louis!’
It pleased me to hear that, Mother – it was good to know that we would have at least one friend in America.
I gazed up the ship’s enormous black side. At the top I could see beams and ropes, strings of tiny flags, an enormous smokestack, and heads looking down at us over the rail.
‘We’ll have to step over the ocean to get to the stairs!’ Tilin looked a little panicky.
I felt my stomach lurching, but I grabbed Johnny’s hand and quickly stepped across.
I held my hand out to Tilin and soon she was standing next to me on the little platform.
Johnny lifted Sidong into our arms. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘We will wait until you are safely on board.’
‘Shall we go to America, Luki?’ Tilin said.
‘Let’s go!’ I replied gaily.
Step by step we climbed, with Sidong between us. Looking up at the ship, it had seemed immoveable, but now I realized it was moving on top of the waves. The stairway banged against its side, keeping time to the pounding of my heart. Soon we had reached the top and stepped over a metal lintel. A burly man slammed a gate shut behind us. The floor was crammed with wooden crates, trunks, bags and people of all sorts – highlanders, lowlanders and some who looked like they were neither. High above it all was a balcony crowded with Americans watching the scene below.
‘Luki.’
My heart leaped. I stared at the smiling face, the lean planes slightly shadowed by stubble, the dark hair hanging long over his forehead.
‘Samkad! What are you doing here?’ Tilin cried.
But I couldn’t speak. I could feel a pulse in the soles of my feet. I wanted to run away. But where could I run? We were in the middle of an ocean.
Samkad scratched the back of his head, the way he always did when he’d done something he knew would upset me. He reached out to touch me but I drew back. ‘Luki, let me explain.’
‘I don’t think Luki wants to talk to you,’ Tilin said.
But Samkad stepped between us, turning his back on Tilin. He spoke quickly, his voice heavy with emotion. ‘I’m sorry I avoided you before you left. I was just so … disappointed. I thought it was over between us. But when you’d gone, I realized I couldn’t bear to be away from you. I needed to be with you, Luki. So I followed you. But when I caught up with the group, you and Tilin had gone missing. I’m so relieved they found you. I can’t believe I’m here! I can’t believe we’re together again.’
He raised a hand and took a step towards me.
I didn’t think, Mother. I just grabbed his arm and swung him into the ship’s rail. Then I bent down, scooped up his legs, and heaved him over the side, into the sea.
Part Two
11
Leaving
I watched him vanish in a white puff of sea foam. After a moment, his head bobbed up to the surface, hair now slicked back, eyes shocked, mouth open, gasping and shouting. But I couldn’t hear him for the explosion of noise around me as people rushed to the rail to have a look. The ocean began to swell. Bigger and bigger and bigger until it swallowed Samkad’s little head. What had I done? But Mother, I couldn’t help it. How dare he push himself into my life, as if what I wanted had meant nothing.
Hands pushed me aside. Voices boomed. Man overboard, man overboard!
Then the giant wave began to roll away and there was Samkad, coughing up sea water and shaking the hair from his eyes.
Johnny’s boat was still tethered to the stairway and the boatmen soon pulled Samkad out of the water, glistening like a freshly born baby. Cheers erupted from the balcony above us. The Americans were enjoying the spectacle enormously.
I willed Samkad to stay in Johnny’s boat, Mother. Stay on that boat and let Johnny take you back to the shore! But no. Samkad quickly hopped onto the stairway and began to make his way back up.
An iron hand closed around my arm. It was the man who’d been opening and shutting the gate. He grabbed Samkad with his other hand.
Truman Hunt came running. ‘Wait! What are you doing?’
‘Taking them to the captain,’ the man said. ‘Him over there.’
He pointed at the balcony. A tall man with long white whiskers and a visored hat was waving him on impatiently. ‘Captain don’t tolerate this kind of behaviour. The savages will have to leave the ship.’
Truman Hunt hurried alongside as the man steered us both through a door, up some stairs, and into a little room where the captain was now waiting.
The captain opened his mouth to speak, but Truman Hunt was already chattering away.
‘Captain, sir, I am so sorry this happened. The Igorot are a simple people, sir, they are like children.’
The captain sighed. ‘Hunt, you assured me it would be safe to allow these savages on board – and then this happens! I should have the whole lot of them sent back to shore.’
‘It will not happen again, Captain, sir.’ Hunt clutched his bowl hat to his chest and sighed. ‘I promise!’
The captain turned to stare at Samkad. His eyes seemed to trace the swirl of tattoos on Samkad’s chest.
‘I chose these Igorots myself,’ Truman Hunt said. ‘I assure you, sir, these are the sweetest people in the world. Do not believe what the newspapers say about them being violent people. They are harmless. What happened was the result of a love quarrel. I will make sure the young man and young lady are kept apart throughout the journey. There will be no repeat of this incident.’
The captain kept shaking his head, but in the end he let us go.
When the door closed behind us, Hunt stopped and glared. ‘I don’t want any more trouble from the two of you. If you don’t stay away from each other you’ll be confined to quarters with no fresh air for the rest of the journey! Are we agreed?’
As I nodded, I glanced at Samkad. There was a smugness to his smile. As if he’d gotten away with something.
It was a good thing we weren’t standing by the ship’s rail, Mother. I would have thrown him back into the sea.
We could watch the changing shore from the small round windows of the women’s room. On our first day of sailing, Tilin, Sidong and I sat on the bed for hours, staring. It was quite beautiful, rice fields turning into green jungle turning into sandy beach. And then, Mother, quite suddenly, mountains!
Tilin and I looked at each other. Somewhere in the melting blue of those distant mountains was the invisible world of our ancestors. Somewhere up there were our friends and neighbours working on their rice paddies, and the ancients sitting around the fires. Everyone that we had left behind.
And then the mountains vanished and soon the land was gone too, and there was only ocean and sky left for us to watch.
Back home, I was used to sleeping in the House for Women, to the heat of so many bodies in the same space, the noises of many women dreaming. But in the Shawmut’s room for women, there must have been two hundred beds crammed together under a low ceiling. I had never been so close to so many strangers.
Most of the other women in the room for women were lowlanders called ‘Visayans’. They rolled their hair high on their heads, wrapped skirts on top of skirts, wore several blouses all at once … and then stared at us as if we were the ones who looked odd.
Tilin said to not mind them, but many times I caught her watching the Visayan women with a wondering look, as if she was trying to imagine what she would look like if she twirled her hair and wore double skirts too.
There were also people called Mangyans, who dressed simply but covered themselves in beads, and there were people in breechcloths and simple clothing who told us they were called Aetas, but whom everyone insisted on calling Negritos, the way everybody called us Igorots.
They were all going to Saint Louis. I felt foolish, thinking that President Roosevelt had only invited Bontoks.
Later, the ship stopped at a port called Yokohama, and a large family got on board. The men were heavily bearded and the women had tattoos around their mouths. I wasn’t surprised to hear that President Roosevelt had invited them too.
I wondered if Theodore Roosevelt would be pleased by this turnout. What would it be like when Truman Hunt finally presented us to him? Would his English be easy to understand? Would I manage to find words in my throat so that he could understand me? Surely he would be delighted to meet us. I imagined pouring him a cup of tapuy, how he would be amazed at its rich flavour and grateful for the gift of our friendship.
The part of the ship we lived in was called ‘steerage’. Americans lived on the ship’s upper floors. Whenever we came out to the open deck, we could hear them talking, laughing, even singing on the balcony. But the only Americans we saw in steerage were Truman Hunt and the other managers, or the crew.
We got used to life on the ship very quickly. Got used to sleeping with so many women in the same room. Got used to the beds built one on top of the other. Got used to water coming out of tubes in the toilet. Got used to sitting on a bowl to make water and move our bowels. Got used to pulling a chain to make it all disappear. Got used to eating on a long table, with food and drink served in tin pails.
At first Samkad kept trying to speak to me. He seemed to be everywhere, waiting outside doors, standing in dark corners, hovering in the long, narrow corridors. ‘We have to talk,’ he whispered whenever I walked past. ‘Come, we can talk outside.’
Mother, I was sorely tempted! I kept my lips firmly pressed together and refused to look at him. I wasn’t going to allow him to talk me into marrying him. After a while, he gave up. And when everyone was out on deck, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air, he no longer crossed to our side of the Shawmut.
That was how it was, Mother. Even when I saw him with Kinyo and I burned with curiosity to know whether the brothers had called a truce, I stayed away. Sidong liked to play with him, but I stayed away. And I stayed away even though I wanted to tell him about every new thing. For days and days and days. I told myself that was how it should be.
The weeks passed. The sky darkened and an icy wind began to blow. People ceased to venture on deck, preferring the warmth of the stuffy indoors. Even Tilin stopped going outside. She busied herself with finding ways to entertain Sidong, watching over the little girl as she drew incessantly in her ledger.
But no matter the weather, I made my way outside. Often I was the only person on the slippery deck, leaning on the rail and watching the clouds thickening then dissolving then thickening again, watching the great grey ocean swilling about beneath the Shawmut.
One early evening, when the moon was already casting a yellow ripple in the ocean swell, I heard a low wail. It wasn’t human, I was sure of it. Then there it was again. Deeper this time. Then I felt it, a humming. It was in the ocean. It was in the air. It travelled through the cold metal of the rail and into my fingers. And then I could feel it coursing in my blood. The ocean was singing.
And then, slowly, beneath the waves, something moved. I leaned out, out, across the rail, not caring that the icy spray was needling me.
A shadow pressed up against the surface. The water began to cascade around it like a waterfall.
A great eye opened, the iris glistening and grey around a massive black pupil.
The ocean looked at me.
It was an eye that had seen many things, that knew the answer to many mysteries. If the ancients had been here, they would have known what to say.
I swallowed. ‘Ocean, what do you know?’ I whispered. ‘What awaits me in America?’ My knuckles shone white on the rail.
For a moment, I thought I saw a spark, a tiny flash of light in that massive eye.
But then the lid pulled down. The waters swirled inwards. The ocean looked away and though I listened hard, I could no longer hear its song.
12
America
At first America was just a shadow on the horizon, just a suggestion. And then it became longer and darker. And soon we could see green swathes that could be trees, and the shapes of rocks. And then we weren’t in open sea any more, because we were sailing between islands, we could just see their shorelines in the distance. And then the water became narrower, great white birds flocked around us, and we could see branch and leaf and bark of the trees massing on the shore. The water became narrower still. And the land began to close in.
All day, passengers had crowded the deck, watching America approach. There was a sociable atmosphere, the air humming with eagerness and conversation. But at mid-afternoon, when it became obvious that the Shawmut would soon be touching land, the hum turned into silence. Forty-nine days we had been at sea, Mother. It felt momentous. It was hard to believe our time on water was coming to an end.
Tilin had hoisted Sidong up in her arms to see. They leaned against me as we watched the thin line of the shore turn into a small city.
The city was called Tacoma and, Mother, in the lowering sun, the sweep of brick buildings gleamed like gold. Hundreds of columns of smoke spiralled from every rooftop. It was a hilly place, the buildings seeming to stack one on top of the other. From the boat, the horse-drawn carts moving up and down steep streets looked tiny. Behind the city loomed a great white mountain. A white mountain! How could that be?
On the waterfront, a huddle of boats made a twiggy forest with their masts. A wooden platform jutted right out into the ocean. We could see another ship already tethered to it, and hundreds of tiny figures swarming on it like ants. Soon the Shawmut would be taking its place there too.
Unexpectedly, I found myself searching the crowd around us for Samkad. I felt myself blush. Having avoided him for forty-nine days, why was I seeking him out now? Habit? Had I forgotten my rage? I had walked away from marriage and he’d followed, thinking himself irresistible.
Samkad was standing with a group of Bontok men on the rail across the deck from us. The breeze riffled through his dark hair. Like everyone else, his gaze was distant and dreamy, watching the approaching shore. He was not looking for me like I was looking for him.
Mother, how could I be so foolish? How could I claim I didn’t want him and yet feel this need to see him?
Slowly, slowly, the Shawmut turned its great bulk until it was parallel to the wooden platform, which Truman Hunt called a ‘pier’. Men ran alongside, shouting as ropes were thrown. When the Shawmut finally came to a halt, we all erupted into cheers of joy and relief. On the balcony above us, the Americans whistled and clapped and threw their hats in the air.
We were in America at last.
Later, when the sun slipped behind a grey cloud, we began to feel the American cold. The pier’s icy wooden boards stung the soles of our bare feet. It felt like the freezing air was rubbing our faces raw. We pressed our hands against our cheeks to warm them, only to find them numbed with cold. The Americans disembarked, pulling hats over their heads, wrapping their necks in warm cloths, and sheathing their fingers in thick mitts. And then everyone gasped to see that Kinyo, whom we had envied his warmer American clothes, had changed into his old breechcloth. Like us, he had to tug a blanket around his neck for warmth.
‘He promised Truman Hunt that he would dress like an Igorot when we got to America,’ Tilin whispered.
Truman Hunt was looking at us anxiously. His voice was apologetic as he began to speak. Kinyo translated: ‘First of all, Tacoma is a cold place and it will be much warmer in Saint Louis, which is further south. The Northern Pacific Railway has prepared warm clothing for you at the station, which is a very short walk from here. At the station, we will board the train to Saint Louis. Don’t worry, it won’t be cold on the train. They use steam to keep the train heated.’
Which was a relief to hear, because he’d told us that the train journey to Saint Louis was going to take five days. Five days! That is how big America is, Mother. Had we taken the train to Manila, it would have taken us one day instead of five days’ walking. But the train to Manila didn’t allow Igorots, according to Truman Hunt.
‘What is that noise?’ Sidong suddenly said.
It was a strange howling from the end of the pier, where passengers stepped onto the streets of Tacoma.
Truman Hunt leaped up on a wooden crate, talking so quickly Kinyo could barely keep up. ‘Hear that? Those are people! Hundreds have come to Tacoma to see YOU!’ He threw his arms wide. ‘All the newspapers have been writing about your arrival for months. Igorots are famous. People are desperate to meet Igorots!’
