cecilia manguerra-brainard's

   she is not a woman with horns so i want to entitle this review with "who's afraid of cecilia?" but i can't imagine cecilia as virginia woolf either; i know there is a hint of feminism in cecilia's writings yet it's so subtle, so carefully laid out, so sisterly written that i read more a lullaby in her writings than a written work ala gertrude stein's; but then, i never read gertrude stein's work; i just feel like dropping feminist writers' names tonight;

cecilia maguerra-brainard is my new victim in my pinoy author's review and i'm helpless to write about her, she can't be ignored, she's just one of those who says - "well, i'm a mother, a teacher, a student, a novelist, a wife, a businesswoman here and there, and if you think you're worse off than me, well, get over it."

it's about time for me to review one of her stories, i think my timing is just perfect since i've been extolling recently the people described by pigafetta...and well,  she is direct from the loins of lapu lapu and king humabon, the modern version of the zzubuano,

cecilia maguerra-brainard is definitely the more famous cebuana writer around.

i think,  woman with horns  is one of cecilia's earlier works; one of the things i like about cecilia's  writing is the fluidity of her english, it flows like a song, she's not one who begs me to open a thesaurus or a dictionary to understand her; and believe me, there are many filipino writers who write as if their readers invented the oxford dictionary; it doesn't pay to write when no one gets it;  just ask hemingway - he's one who struggled to find the perfect, simplest english words for his novels, re-read the old man and the sea and you'd see what i mean; hemingway writes so simple even a six year old boy would understand his words; cecilia isn't hemingway-esque in writing, but she constructs her sentences so beautifully you'd forgive her for using one or two difficult words every now and then; that's not easy for a writer to do...

and then of course, the story...

Woman With Horns is centered around two personalities, two extremely opposite personalities: agustina, the so called Woman with Horns and gerald, an American doctor in the Philippines at the turn of the century;

with agustina in her story, cecilia manguerra-brainard (as a fiction writer) virtually contradicts all the filipina characters we have created  in our past literature; we're used to maria clara and celia and laura who all stood at a pedestal upon whose feet the filipino male suffered and worshipped and was killed for; we're used to tagging  virtuous attributes to the subservient filipina who stays in the house waiting for the man to come and beg for her love; we're used to the filipina who either ends up in a convent or the kitchen; otherwise we're used to her as a psychotic woman like sisa; well...

by virtue of these, agustina indeed rises up as a woman with horns, she's straight from the devil you may even say but heck, she's having a goodtime.

she winks, she spreads her legs without a care,  she tells  Gerard to come to her house, even suggests that maybe...you know...she's definitely a  loose woman 'round town...but no matter, and this is where the subtlety of this story comes, no matter how flirtatious and tempting agustina is, cecilia has a way of making sure i don't forget what she is really made up of ...it's like cecilia whispering to my ears..."alex, don't run to conclusions yet, don't jump into any generalization, keep on reading and i will unravel it all to you..." and that's where the excitement begins...

the story comes to me in multi-layers --its setting is at the time americans recently colonized the philippines, Gerald an american MD, a good one at that, is assigned to direct the health centers in ubec (cebu the other way);

and here he is forced to  deal with a very sazzy, exotic, sexual, persistent agustina who  enjoys the attention of men and who is after him; then the story gets lifted into another layer, and cecilia, like an expert cook, adds the ingredient of superstition and ubec's social tradition of gossip: people of course talk about agustina's mother 'doing it' with priests in her heyday and her conceiving agustina after making love with the river monster; hence the tag woman with horns.

agustina, this woman with horns,  eventually succeeds in seducing Gerald, as they both get into the river and do the sex thing...

if i were a shallow reader, i'd probably say, okay, agustina finally triumphs and maybe i'd go on reading the other stories. but i being the way i am don't just read stories this shallow way, i usually search for the story behind the story. i look for  undertones and meanings not overtly expressed.  and with woman with horns, the story behind the story is quite more tender, more passionate, much purer, and much heroic;

this is the real story behind woman with horns: Gerald is losing his drive  to life, he comes to the philippines to forget the loss of his wife to cancer; this loss is compounded by his transgression with the  nurse who took care of his sick wife, the wife discovers the affair before she dies - With loss and guilt, Gerald is drying like a twig, losing his battle with depression... then comes this agustina, this woman full of life, a woman who was recently widowed herself, and her appearance starts to rattle the guarded foundation of Gerald;

Read this:

It bothered him deeply that Agustina, widowed for only a little over a year, would laugh, be happy, even flirt outrageously with him. Why was she not consumed with grief? Why did she not sit at home crocheting white doilies? Why did she not light candles in the crumbling musty churches, the way proper Ubecan widows did? He was outraged at her behaviour. He condemned her for the life that oozed out of her, when he needed every ounce of his strength just to stay sane.

and here, my dear readers is what i enjoyed the most in reading  this good short story.  i discover agustina nobler than the rest,  i begin to realize that her every flirtation,  every persistence, every way of being radical and suggestive and aggressive towards Gerald was her natural way of saving him; agustina becomes the doctor and Gerald the patient.

so that, when she joins him in the river to fulfill their desires, i find not a woman with horns but a goddess of love and compassion as she saves the man she loves.

thank you cecilia...

Alex Maskara

Volume 1