Barrio Tales and Other Stories

Barrio

Apung Igna





It's summer in my town, I am sitting calmly and solitarily on top of a tomb in our town's cemetery which is located behind our house. I am surprised I recognize names chiseled on many tomb plates nowadays. When I was a kid, the names on tomb plates I read were so foreign, so remote to me. Nowadays, the names belong to people I knew very well, names that had human bodies and personalities. Kind'a depressing thinking of them dead people, can't help it. I'm in a cemetery.

I remember people once alive but dead now, people that used to color my life, now lying in tombs placed in cemented boxes, forever silent, forever alone.

For example, here is Apung Igna, she was the most excited when I left for America, her shrill voice swallowed all the voices that bid me farewell. "Don't forget to buy me forceps, the good brand. Also, buy me cotton as much as you can get in America. Oh don't forget Johnson's Baby Powder and the best brand of rubbing alcohol."

Well, no way would she have them. She's dead and I'm sitting on top of her tomb, her tomb plate bears her name in black - Ignacia de Guzman, RIP, born- September 12, 1899 dead- November 2, 2000. That's all that's written about her. I can't believe that her greatness would be summed up only by two lines after her death. It's cruel. Imagine after a hundred years, only a name, a date of birth, a date of death, and nothing...nothing was there to remember her by. I won't let this happen to Apung Igna. I will write about her because she deserves more than two lines in her tombstone. She deserves a novel. Besides, her tomb is my chair now as I write this.

Apung Igna was a midget Spanish beauty no taller than 4 feet, (and according to the wise opinion of my mother, who never runs out of opinions to begin with), was destined to become the official midwife of town. Why? She was born prematurely, remained a 'baby' forever due to her height and most of all, yes, most of all, and this is the best reason, a reason above all reasons, a reason that must make us all weep in silence and bow in utter wonderment, Apung Igna did not grow nails. To my mother, that final revelation was the ultimate reason to become a midwife, you are no longer expected to ask Mother further questions, because if you do, like the way I did when I was a kid, Mother would become a tigress, ready to defend the mystical destiny of Apung Igna. "You don't ask God why His miracles are so. God deprived Apung Igna of nails because she was meant to hold babies at birth. Having nails would potentially scratch a baby's delicate skin. Which reminds me... show me your nails....Don't turn your back on me little boy, show me your nails. Huh they are dirty again, I need to cut those worm-infested little nails of yours little bastard... Alex Maskaraaaaaaaaa....Come back! I need to cut your nails!

I would never let my mother cut my nails as long as I am alive - she used a pair of scissors which I think was meant to cut plants and cows. Gosh it was soooo big, and no one could convince her to use a regular nail cutter because to her, cutting nails meant using the same scissors which had been handed down to her family generations dating back all the way to China where her forefathers came from. Of course her Chinese family tradition is a different story, as different as the Spanish tradition on my father side....and I am very confused now, why am I talking about these things when I was supposed to talk about Apung Igna?

Ok, for my mother, being born without nails was the natural reason for one to become a midwife, of course this only applies to females. It was as natural as the use of coconut water to ease the passage of a baby into the world.

Despite Apung Igna's beauty she remained single. She could have been diminutive like the girl-vampire in Anne Rice's novels, but honey, in her one hundred years, her nail-less hands were the first to hold 99 percent of the babies born in our town. Including me. She saw everyone naked, she saw everyone's sex organ, she heard everyone's first cries, she saw anyone meant to turn blue turn blue; she saw anyone meant to die die; she saw anyone meant to survive survive. And she had a story to tell about everyone. She, foremost of all, predicted I'd turn into homosexual.

"The cry of your child," she told my mother upon my birth, "indicates he is a homosexual."

I don't know if I turned homosexual because I was destined to be or I turned homosexual because she predicted it and Mother anticipated it. I really don't know and I don't care. All I know now is I am sitting on top of her tomb, like a crown jewel to her very illustrious and humanitarian career. According to my mother, Apung Igna rarely failed in delivering babies, delivering was the root word, meaning, it wasn't clear whether the babies were dead or alive. Anyhow, Apung Igna was the prima-donna in delivering babies. All the other Manila educated midwives in town competing against her could not snatch the 'official midwife' title from her because as far as the women in my town were concerned, it ain't matter if you were trained in Mayo Clinic, if you have nails, you have no business delivering babies.

It was not really difficult to deliver babies in my town. Our women are famous all over the world for fertility. My town's women will curse me for this but they are really sought all over the world for their capacity to produce - in fact, even Sweden and Norway ambassadors once begged our barangay captain to look for women in my town who might be willing to marry and live with their lonely-can't-find-a-wife men. Even Alaskans are writing our women left and right, promising us a yearly supply of salmon as long as some of our women would marry some of their men. I don't blame foreigners for marrying our women. I heard some Europeans have never heard a baby cry since nineteen-nineties. Their populations are dwindling. Well, that's understandable.

But what I don't understand is - who will marry and live in Alaska which is nothing to us but a brand of condensed milk? Our women condemn this foreigners seeking native women for marriages - love to our women still includes chocolates and roses. These men's love isn't romantic, they complain. I love you to them means something like - I love you not because you are beautiful, not because you are full of sex appeal, I love you because your ovaries are so fertile. How pathetic can love become? Still, it is a known fact all over the world that our women are fertile. Marry a woman from my town and make her a mother in a European small town that has never heard of baby cries since nineteen nineties and you'd be full of screaming and bubbling and pestering and little headaches in a couple of years.

If God would decide that women could get pregnant twice a year, our women would snatch that privilege without hesitation. My grandmother on the father side produced twenty one children in her lifetime (ten of them survived, eleven died. I asked one time if my grandmother had reptilian blood. Does she deliver eggs? For which I was paddled by my mother.) and her over-production was not because she was married to my grandfather who was one of the Founding Fathers of Iglesia Ni Kristo who at that time was said to be unbelievably persecuted, he wore all his life nothing but white clothes, and he never got his children get baptized in his religion. My grandfather lived, suffered and died alone as an Iglesia because - he was younger, yes, younger than my grandmother who was Catholic and the rule of my town is - the religion of whoever is older between husband and wife will be the religion of the children. And I don't know why I am writing this now which has no bearing to my story. I am so confused.

Mother produced twelve children. But she would slap my face for saying that. The correct way of saying it is - My horny father who followed the footsteps of his horny father had made my mother produce twelve children, a perfect slate, no abnormalities, no miscarriages , all breast-fed - is it any wonder why she had a heart attack and was admitted in the ICU last year? You won't make twelve lives out of your petite body without damaging it one way or another. My father, of course, like one of those barakos around, still believes he can produce more, despite his age. We had to put him away from my mother. ICU bills are expensive!

Our women pregnancies are the stuff that legends are made up of. Indang Kamachili for example, would deliver a baby tonight and would be washing soiled blankets and clothes the following morning. I don't know but as a kid, I got this impression that our women don't scream during labor, I think they yawn and out comes forth a baby like steam out of their tea kettle spout, like a pollen from a flower...well, to be blunt, like shit. And my mother had the audacity to tell me (when I was a kid) that she picked me up out of carabao's manure. She gave me that stupid answer to my question about how babies are made. Which she did at least twelve times. Also, I can't understand mothers in my towns always using this pathetic line - "I suffered carrying you in my womb for nine months and delivering you" - like - hello, Who asked you? It certainly wasn't me.

Apung Igna was worth more than how my mother measured her; much much more.

I was nine years old when my mother delivered her last child; she had a normal pregnancy previously, but she was almost forty-five years old with this last one; the reason why she pushed for her twelfth pregnancy was because she wanted another girl. Out of eleven children so far, she had only one girl. She felt it cruel, very very cruel for a lone girl to be surrounded by ten brothers all her life. Mother hoped and prayed for a baby girl this time. And she wasn't worried about her age, she was confident of the skills of Apung Igna, the greatest midwife of our town.

All I remember on that day were hushes and quick moves, Father was in his usual manner, boiling hot water and breaking open as many coconuts as he could break open. Apung Igna was preparing a basin of alcohol and cotton and newly washed linens out of flour sacks. Everyone seemed restless.

Except Mother.

Apung Igna pressed Mother. "It is a must", that was what I heard Apung Igna say clearly. "Rosita, you are two weeks overdue. We must try very hard to get this baby out of you. NOW!"

And I heard all the pushes and encouragements and the deep breaths and the cries for almost a day - but nothing, Mother said she was feeling nothing coming out.

Apung Igna changed her demeanor this time - the look of fear, the look of helplessness - a face I would remember for the rest of my life.

"Apung Igna", Mother said, "I'm alright, give me a couple more days and I will make it."

Apung Igna blurted, "Stop acting as if this were a delivery like you had had in the past Rosita. There are no more days left. You have to go to the City Hospital. You are in danger of killing your child or yourself or both of you."

And that was the time even I stood and became nervous. Apung Igna would not say this unless she was sure. And by her temper and the sweat on her face and the pallor she had, I knew something was going wrong.

"Miling", Apung Igna called on my father, "You must rent a jeepney quickly and go to the City Hospital...time is important now." Gone was her shrill voice. Gone was her confidence.

After Mother and Father left for the City, I watched Apung Igna place back all her stuff in her comadrona bag; I saw her crying. I didn't know if she was crying due to her failure or out of pity for the eleven children that might become mother-less. I started crying too.

Mother delivered a baby daughter in City Hospital, this daughter would later become a Maternity Nurse here in the US. Just like Apung Igna.

This is how great Apung Igna was -

She knew her limits. She was unafraid to lower herself to save lives.

I thank her for that.

Alex Maskara

Barrio Tales