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Chapter 1 | The Bottom of the Earth
One year ago, the mountain above Dimagabi cracked and fell on everything below. The village was invaded by heavy waves of soft mud, uprooted grass, and broken coconut trees, killing everything in less than five minutes. When the mud dried, all of Dimagabi was buried beneath it – parents, children, goats, chickens, pigs, caribou, houses. The land doesn’t care who it buries, because the land was here before us. God made the land first.
There was only one thing left of Dimagabi: Manang Glenda’s sari-sari store. In the Kalawakan barangay of the Philippines, where I live, a sari-sari store is a hut made of bamboo and nipa leaves, where Filipinos buy the little things that help them survive. Little things like soap, toothpaste, aspirin, and hairbrushes. Usually there is a Filipina woman behind the counter, staring down the dirt road. People walk by and say Kumsta po kayo, which means “How are you?” And the woman says Mabuti, which means “Fine.” This was Manang Glenda, before the mudslide. After the mudslide, she was buried with the pigs and the caribou. But her store – her store full of little things – still stood.
God saved that sari-sari store for me.
*
In Kalawakan, a great flood wall made of enormous stones separates the village from the bay. A natural pier stretches away from the wall and the rocky bank of our coastal village and reaches far into the water. According to village legend, the pier is like the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden – God, after creating this beautiful bay for swimming and washing, carved out the bottom of the Earth to tell us where our free will ended and His will began. Because the bottom of the Earth was covered with water, He used the pier to show us where it was. Even though you could float into the bay by boat, you could never venture further than the pier on foot. If you tried, the Earth would open under your feet, drowning you.
My older sister Ang-Ang once told me that the spirits of drowned children rose from the bay at night and slipped through the cracks between the bamboo walls of the nipa hut where we lived. They watched us while we slept, she said.
“They stink and their brains are hanging out of their ears. They wear seaweed and grass like a cape,” she whispered, while the mosquitoes buzzed around in the netting above our bed. It was the only sound we could hear except for the gentle rustling of our mother and uncle, who slept in separate cots a few feet away. Our nipa hut had only one other room – the kitchen, with its clay pit full of charred wood. “They come in through the cracks, but you can’t see them because they’re invisible.”
“If that’s true, how come you’re not afraid when you go to sleep?” I asked.
“The ghosts can always tell who has the weakest spirit in the room. That way, they know who to attack. That’s why I don’t have to worry. But if I were you, I’d be scared. You have a weak spirit, and it’s not just because you’re younger than me. Some people are born that way. When the ghosts find out you’re the weakest, they choke you in your sleep.” She wrapped her hands around her neck to demonstrate.
On my thirteenth birthday, Buyong Estrada, a boy in my village, dared me to swim past the Tree of Knowledge.
My Uncle Dali always warned me that Buyong was a bad seed who liked to start trouble – He stirs up chaos, but manages to disappear when the chaos finds him, my uncle said – but as I waded in the warm water of the bay alone, I found it impossible to ignore him.
“Swim out here, Mayumi! I dare you!” Buyong called. He and his cousin, who we called Baby-Son, were floating in a makeshift boat on the opposite side of the pier. “Swim past the pier or I’ll hit you with my slingshot!” He held up a homemade slingshot, pretended to aim, then laughed. When a bird cawed overhead, he tried to hit it, but the rock plopped into the water just a few feet away from his boat. He looked back at me. “Come on, Mayumi!"
Uncle Dali and mother leaned against the flood wall, drinking bottles of Mirinda and watching us without really paying attention. They were too far away to hear Buyong. Otherwise, my uncle would have scolded him.
“Leave me alone, Buyong!” I called back.
Instead, Buyong continued: “Don’t be scared just because you’re a girl! Ang-Ang swims past the pier all the time.”
I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked toward my mother and uncle. They were talking to each other, paying no attention. Uncle Dali told me over and over again not to swim past the pier, but I was certain he wouldn’t notice if I drifted off for a second or two, just to prove to Buyong that I wasn’t afraid.
Facing the flood wall, I pushed myself backward with my arms, closer and closer to the end of the pier, without taking my eyes off Dali and mother. My feet brushed the tops of slick rocks. Behind me, the bay emptied into the blue Pacific Ocean. Buyong and Baby-Son watched without a word.
The rocky bed of Kalawakan Bay continued against the tips of my toes, but after a single determined push, they disappeared. When I realized that my toes no longer touched the bottom, I panicked. My arms and legs flailed above my head like tails of a dying fish. Every time I yelled for help, salt water choked my throat and turned my desperate cries into pathetic croaks.
In the distance, my mother folded her arms across her chest and watched me. When my Uncle Dali realized what was happening, he dropped his glass bottle of soda; it crashed against the rocks so loudly that I could hear it above the splashing water and my screams. He immediately ran into the water and swam toward me, but my mother made no frantic movements. She did not scream for help. She just stood.
Once on the bank, I coughed until my face turned red. My throat swelled and my eyes burned. Uncle Dali rubbed my shoulders and shouted quick, excited commands. Cough, Mayumi! Breathe! Pinch your nose! Don’t rub your eyes! Calm down! When I leaned forward and threw up salt water at my mother’s feet, she took two steps back and said, “Next time, you will listen to your uncle.”
Staring down at the gray and black rocks, now dotted with sprinkles of dripping water, I thought: My uncle loves me. My mother doesn’t. When I saw Buyong and Baby-Son rowing quickly in the opposite direction, I didn’t even care.
That afternoon, when I told Ang-Ang what happened, she said she wouldn’t have saved me either. “That was a stupid thing to do,” she said. “If I were Uncle Dali, I’d make you pay me back for that bottle of Mirinda.” She giggled for what seemed like hours before she ran off to find her friends.
Mayumi of the Water is set in southern Leyte, Philippines, in the fictional villages of Kalawakan, Dimagabi, and Bagasbas. All three barangays are inspired by actual villages in southern Leyte. Kalawakan is modeled after the rural fishing village of Sogod, the hometown of the Entrada family. Nearby Guinsaugon, where a 2006 mudslide buried more than 1,000 residents, was the inspiration for Dimagabi.
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