Creative Non-Fiction: Wake From – Mia Tijam (Philippines)

Wake from

I’m awake
It’s 3:05 am
It’s still night
…………..My eyes are open:
…………..I saw that I was somewhere— carnival or circus—somewhere high with a roller-coaster and flapping flags in the blue and white sky. There were people laughing and talking about where to go, what to ride, where to play billiards, where to eat and drink after.
…………………..He was there with those people.
…………………..She was there with them.
……….. I am not jealous this time.
…………………..He said that he loves me.
…………………..He left her for me.
…………………..She was trailing after him.
……….. I follow them with my eyes.
……………………They passed these two old women dressed like gypsy fortune tellers who came out from a wooden door in a wall. The wall looked like it was the Great Wall of China.
……….. I look again and it was the walls of Intramuros in Manila.
……………………The gypsy women passed by me and grunted to each other, “Married in another lifetime.”
……….. I turn, seeing their orange scarves, looking after them, feeling a tearing in my chest.
………..I hear a woman’s voice hiss, “Not our blood.”
…………I look away from them and see Inay Lilay–
My great-grandmother
Her gaunt and gray face
Hanging in a portrait on the wall
In a living room where I would run from
The eyes of the dead on the wall at night
………..–Looking at me
………..Then This This is This is a
This is a dream
……….. I wonder if the old gypsy women were referring to being married to him in this life or the next or previous.
……….. I wonder if they were referring to the girl instead.
Not our blood.
………..They should not be believed.
……….. I continue to follow him—
……………………who was being followed by her.
……….. I begin running towards him, almost stumbling—
……………………somewhere was on a mountain and one side of the mountain began sliding down.
……………………No sound.
……………………There were no screams.
……………………The people were just sliding alongside the rolling red soil together with the roof tops as if they were on a slide in a playground. I saw one dressed as a Shaman, looked again and saw an Igorot instead, riding a surfboard through the waving ground, smiling—
This was a dream This was a This was This
……………………The Igorot said: Don’t fight it
…………………………………………Just slide
…………………………………………So that you don’t fall
……………………I blacked out.
…………I find myself awake—
……………………standing inside a house with mumbling strangers. The house was on the foot of the mountain and it had high ceilings, like in a ballroom. It was all gray.
…………Outside the house—
……………………there were people waiting among concrete rubble with spotlights and candles.
…………It is night.
What are they waiting for?
Why aren’t we coming out?
…………I see that someone came out of the house, I can’t see who, to get— give something else from an old man outside— I am not allowed to know what. My eyes follow until I see the same old man standing on a wooden porch, in a house built right there—
……………………where we were
………...He is waiting—
…………A voice drags me back—
……………………to the house that was a ballroom when it announced to everyone inside to
TURN TO THE PERSON TO YOUR LEFT.
…………To file out?
…………To be paired?
…………To hold a hand?
…………………… I wondered where I was— Where he was— Would I be to his left— Would he be to my left— Where was he?
……………………I saw smiling people in pairs in the house and they began dancing to the beginning of a tango. My eyes followed two pairs dancing— like two Tetris lines about to meet. I saw that one pair was a young man and a woman, the other was two young women. They danced, laughing, drawing towards each other— nearer and nearer.
……………………They collided— there was a CLAP and a white shimmer.
……………………Three disappeared.
……………………Only one woman was left: she was an old woman.
……………………She was looking at her hands, opened her mouth—
……………………The house began to be filled with—
.
CLAP
.
……………………—white shimmers—
…………I can’t breathe—
How long have we been here?
……………………I waded into the smiling mass of waiting pairs, looking for him, wanting to be close enough to tell him to not wait for me, to not dance with anyone else, to not touch hands in that place so then we wouldn’t have to dance.
Who will disappear between us?
……………………I saw him and he was alone, looking around, looking for me.
……………………I was running towards him, just wanting to be with him.
……………………He saw me and smiled—relieved– held his hand out.
…………—-The old woman is wailing.
……………………I wanted to wake up.
……………………—-They were all wailing.
…………I wake up.
This was a dream This was a This was This
…………This is real.
…………It’s 8:55 am.
…………I’m awake.
It’s still night
I’m here

.
Mia Tijam is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program of the University of the Philippines (Diliman) and a fellow for Creative Nonfiction in the 2007 National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete. Her short fiction has been published in the Philippines Free Press, Philippine Speculative Fiction anthologies, and Digest of Philippine Genre Stories. Her speculative fiction has been given an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin Grant) and a finalist in the 2009 Philippines Free Press Literary Awards. She is the resident critic of the Happy Mondays Poetry Readings and the co-editor of Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler (www.philippinespeculativefiction.com). And recently she has made it into the annals of Philippine Secondary Worlds history via www.farthestshore.kom.ph.

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