Tikbalang Redux
When the Tikbalang told me he could find the hard dark pearl sitting at the crux of me, I believed him. When the Tikbalang fed me the pink underbellies of salmon, I ate gratefully. Later, in bed with the Tikbalang, I felt a roiling throng of fish in the black pit of my stomach, pulling me towards the pool of water from which I first sprang.
The Tikbalang is the upper half of a horse, the lower half of a man—and both halves are troublesome, trickster.
I met the Tikbalang at a treehouse club, where we were both dancing. The roof was made of canvas, like a tent, and the mass of grinding bodies beneath it moved like the ocean in a storm. I had on heeled shoes, which made me appear lithe and strong. Not once did I stop moving, not even when the Tikbalang sidled up to me, one hand grasping oranges, the other hand spinning his tail like a lasso.
The Tikbalang is one of many Aswangs that haunt the forest. It is known to lead travelers astray, to turn them around so that they wander in circles.
The Tikbalang took me to Boston. We drank cherry beer and sat in the Commons as the geese and parents and babies flew by. I would be very happy doing small things like this for the rest of my life, I said, I’m so fat and happy and full. And the Tikbalang said, I don’t believe you. Why else would you cross half the country to study at the foot of a bearded white man? Why else would you perfect the art of burning, your hair waxed and standing straight like a wick?
They say that when a Tikbalang gets married, rain comes from a clear sky.
In those early months, it rained often, but always with a thick cover of gray clouds. I perched in the windowsill of the Tikbalang’s apartment like a bird begging for entry. Without ever glancing at me, the Tikbalang cooked us dinner: miso soup made from premium dashi, the rich and fatty breasts of ducks, and steaming pots of black rice, nutty and aromatic, because the Tikbalang said white rice had too many carbs. The Tikbalang was always cutting calories, skimming, sculpting. I should have recognized the signs of flight sooner: he needed a lighter body in order to gallop on air.
The Tikbalang of folklore is tall and bony. What they don’t tell you is that the Tikbalang is also very handsome and an excellent cook, though the portions are small.
When we made love, the Tikbalang talked about children, the beauty borne of both of us, babies with gold at their brows. They would be tall and beautiful and destined for castles of ivy. The pearlescent eggs sleeping in my abdomen shivered, whispered, and it was the sound of a field with nothing but grass for miles. At the lip of the field was a cottage, and in that cottage was a rabbit, who I knew to be my daughter. All around her was hay. She crossed her small, furry paws, and said, No, I will not spin straw into more straw. No, I will not hope that my sweat bronzes this wheat.
To tame the Tikbalang, you must grab hold of the thickest spine of its mane, and yank.
In those star-dark hours, I fancied myself a rider cresting a great hill, reins gripped in my soft palms. I ran my hands over the Tikbalang’s torso, up the spine to the back of the neck, and felt for the thorny spire that would make the Tikbalang my servant. Each time, my grip slipped, the smooth, sleek pelt yielding no hand-hold. Elsewhere, the Tikbalang grasped my thighs, held me flush and tight. He was seeking a fountain. He was seeking endless youth.
The Tikbalang entered Filipino myth by way of the Spanish. Before being conquered, Filipino people had never seen a horse with its blustering nostrils, its red, rolling eyes.
I could not wipe the stain of this country from my teeth, not with my family living here for two generations. We had paid, and we were still paying. We scrubbed the sun off of all our tongues, we cleaved and drained the fruit, we licked the pink flush from our cheeks when we got drunk. The Tikbalang thought this was weak. He had just moved to the States, and he bristled at how much Americans cared about race—why worry about the cost it takes to assimilate? He was going to get his gold, and that was all that mattered. But as an eldest daughter I must deify my debts, and this means clinging to a Filipino flag.
My father has never spoken of the Tikbalang. His parents shut such tales away when they came to this land of milk and money.
This is a tale as old as time, just lesser known: the Tikbalang in love with what glimmers, the golden hare-girl that dulls over time. Yes, the Tikbalang left, floated into the foliage like a tree-bark ghost. For weeks, I cursed the Tikbalang. I spit up salmon, their iridescent bodies circling in the toilet bowl, taunting. Every night a different bathroom, the pipes curling like pythons, looping back and eating their own tails.
If you put everything into one mythology, there is always something lost.
Enough moons have passed that I wish the Tikbalang the finest fruit and everything else he needs to outrun the sun. I do not know the creatures of his country, only that they exist beyond me. I pray they follow him and guard him from misfortune. And I pray I come back to mine. I pray there is a whole new bestiary of the in-between. I pray there are a thousand Aswang angels dancing on this thin razor blade that we call the present.