Heritage
By Nikki Alfar

Kit noted that she did not wear glasses, despite her obviously advanced age. Her eyes were bright and sharp, like a bird's, though her gaze was level and unwavering.

K it found Lola Basyang on the back porch of the old family home, stitching contentedly as she sat in Kit's father's old-fashioned wood-and-wicker lounging chair. She looked exactly as anyone would expect her to, wearing a shabby but well-mended flowered dress, a knitted shawl close around her shoulders despite the stifling afternoon heat. Her skin was milk-coffee-colored, smooth and saggy at once the way older Filipinas sometimes get. She had once-black hair, mostly gray now; and she did not look up when Kit stepped through the French doors that opened out from the formal dining room.

"Excuse me," Kit said, a bit more sharply than she meant to because she was surprised. "Who are you? No one's supposed to be here!"

"You must be Marikit," the old woman said placidly, still not looking up from her needlework. "I am sorry for the loss of your papa, anak ."

Kit stared. No one had called her "Marikit" in years, not even her father, on pain of Kit hanging up the phone. "I asked you a question," Kit pointed out. "Who are you, what are you doing in my house, and why do you know my name?"

"I am Lola Basyang," the strange woman pronounced, looking up at Kit for the first time. Kit noted that she did not wear glasses, despite her obviously advanced age. Her eyes were bright and sharp, like a bird's, though her gaze was level and unwavering.

"How do you know my father died?" Kit asked, regretting the question as soon as it came out. The crazy old lady was obviously not disposed to answering any question that wasn't repeated at least once; and really, her answers were hardly relevant to the situation at hand. "Never mind, just listen. My father left this house to me; and whoever you are—or whoever you think you are—you need to leave before I call the police."

"But I belong here," the woman said, as calmly as ever. "I have been living in your house for some time now."

Kit backed up against the French doors, digging in her slouch bag for her cell phone. She knew she really ought to call the police, but somehow—although she was now keeping a wary eye out for any accomplices that might be hiding somewhere—the old lady seemed harmless, if possibly insane. And it wasn't as if Kit actually knew what number to dial for the police, anyway.

"I found an old lady sewing on the back porch. She says she's Lola Basyang."

She decided to call Ramon instead. "Hey, it's me," she said into the phone, fighting the ridiculous urge to turn away so that the old woman wouldn't hear her.

"So how's our little love nest looking?" Ramon wanted to know.

"You won't believe what's happened," Kit told him. "I found an old lady sewing on the back porch. She says she's Lola Basyang."

"What!?" Kit wondered why she didn't feel as astonished as Ramon sounded.

"She's Lola Basyang, she says. And she says that she lives here."

Ramon, terse: "Kit, you have to get out of there. Lock yourself in the car and call the police."

"Don't freak out, okay?" Kit said, trying to soothe him. "She's just a little old lady; there's no one else here. It's not like she's tearing down the walls or anything."

"She's a squatter, Kit," Ramon sounded exasperated now. "You have to be careful. People like that will fight to the death for what they think is theirs."

"She's a little old lady," Kit repeated. "What's she going to do, stab me with her sewing needle? 'Fight to the death'... you should hear yourself."

"Will you please just call the police?" He was getting that tone in his voice that she had learned to recognize as acute irritation. "I inputted the number in your cell phone. Just call and wait for them at the gate."

"In the first place," Kit said, as patiently as possible, "they're Manila police. I could call and stand by the gate all day and they might never show up. In the second place, this woman knows way too much about me to be some random squatter. Maybe she was Papa's maid or something; I can't just throw her out into the streets."

"Why in God's name would your father have a maid who thinks she's Lola Basyang?"

"I wouldn't put it past him," Kit said dryly. "Listen, Mon, don't worry about it, okay? I can handle this. I'll call you when I get home."

"If you can handle everything so well," Ramon rasped sarcastically, "then why did you bother calling me?"

He hung up. Kit methodically put her cell phone away, counting to ten, then twenty.

"Your fiancé is a very hot-tempered man," said the erstwhile Lola Basyang.

It had probably tickled his peculiar sense of humor to have a crazy old coot of a maid with delusions of being the grande dame of Filipino storytelling.

"He's just concerned about me," Kit said absently, a split second before realizing that the old woman had revealed yet another instance of overly-familiar knowledge. "How do you—Did you work for my father? Are you the helper here?"

"I worked with your father, let us say," the old woman said, seemingly amused. "I helped him a great deal with his work, yes, that's true."

Kit clicked her tongue against her teeth. Her father had been a cultural anthropologist—a profession no one really understood, so Kit generally explained it as, "He goes around talking to people, then writes down the stories they tell him and publishes them." It had probably tickled his peculiar sense of humor to have a crazy old coot of a maid with delusions of being the grande dame of Filipino storytelling.

"Listen, you can stay here until I've figured out what to do with the house, okay?" she told the woman. "How are you eating? Is there food? Do you need money?"

"Ramon won't like that," Lola Basyang said, drawing her embroidery thread taut, "especially if you give me money."

Kit had turned on her heel and gone to check the kitchen, in which there was virtually no food stocked—typical of her father. She had offered the old woman a generous amount of cash, only to find herself gently but adamantly rebuffed.

* * * *

"I don't get it," she said to Shelly, a day later at work. "I mean, okay, I guess she needs a place to stay, but why would she turn down the money? She'd better not have anyone coming into the house to feed her."

"Well, you said Ramon hired some security guards, right?" Shelly reasoned. "So no one's going in or out without you finding out about it."

"No one's going in, period," Kit grumbled. "Mon gave instructions that the minute Lola goes out, they're to lock the gates behind her."

"Harsh," Shelly commented.

"He calls it a compromise," Kit said. "We're not throwing her out, but if she leaves, she's not coming back. I told him 'when she leaves' is more like it; I mean, she has to eat sometime."

"Too bad," Shelly mused. "It'd be kinda cool, don't you think, to be able to say you live with Lola Basyang? You'll be married in a couple of months anyway, so Ramon will be able to look after you."

"Shel, in the first place, when are you going to get that I don't need 'looking after'?" Kit asked, smiling. "In the second place, anyone with half an education knows that Lola Basyang was really a man, Severino Reyes. You'd think a cultural anthropologist would have kept that in mind."

"It is often unpleasant for people to see things they are not meant to see. I know something about this."

"Says the comp lit major," Shelly quipped. "The sampaloc doesn't fall far from the tree."

* * * *

The old house smelled of sampaloc when Kit went back a week later.

"I made your favorite," Lola announced brightly, bustling about the kitchen. "Sinigang na hipon." Kit trailed her around the room, surreptitiously peeking into cabinets and shelves as she passed. There was still hardly anything in there: some of the digestive crackers her father had favored, a half-eaten jar of Lily's peanut butter, odds and ends. The gate guards reported that no one had entered or exited the house, much less the premises.

"Where did you get fresh shrimp?" Kit asked.

The old lady beamed as she set a place at the kitchen counter. "Don't worry your pretty little head, anak. Just eat! You need more meat on your hips if you and Ramon are going to have children."

"We're not planning to have kids right away," Kit said, and promptly bit her tongue. Somehow she kept chatting with the woman as if everything were perfectly normal, when she had really come to set things straight. "So... my father must have talked to you about me a lot, then?"

"Oh, yes, all the time," Lola Basyang answered. "'Marikit is getting high marks in school', 'Marikit has a new young man', 'Marikit was promoted at work'. He was always very proud."

"Really? I didn't think he approved of me working in the magazine business," Kit said, trying to subtly catch the woman in a misstep.

"Well, of course, he would have preferred you to continue the family tradition," Lola Basyang agreed, inexplicably herding Kit to a seat at the kitchen counter.

"What family tradition? My grandparents ran a restaurant chain—you think this house was built with money from anthropology? It's not exactly a money-making line of work."

"And why do you think people flocked to their first restaurant?" the woman asked. "To hear your Lolo's stories. He knew them from the old days, the old ways." She had managed to maneuver Kit into one of the seats facing the counter, and was now scooping rice from a bowl onto Kit's plate. "From me," Lola continued, with an air of satisfaction.

"Wait, you're trying to tell me you've been with the family since Lolo was young?" Kit asked, sure that she had stumbled onto a winning argument at last. "That's impossible. I lived in this house for, what, twenty, twenty-one years? And I never laid eyes on you until last week."

"That's because you weren't ready to see me then," the old woman told her serenely. "It is often unpleasant for people to see things they are not meant to see. I know something about this."

"What are you talking about?" Kit started to say, but the woman talked right over her. 

"Once," said Lola Basyang,

. . . a man named Magbangal told his wife, "My wife, tomorrow I am going to clear our field. I do not want you to come with me--you must stay here at home." The next morning he took his ten axes, his bolos , his sharpening stone, and a bamboo tube full of water, and set off for the field alone.

When he reached their field, he cut some wood and made the wood into a bench. He sat down on the bench and told his bolos , 'You bolos must be sharpened on the stone.' At once the bolos rose up in the air and began to sharpen themselves on the sharpening stone that he had brought with him.

When the bolos were sharp enough to slice a whisper, Magbangal said to his axes, "You axes must also be sharpened." The ten axes rose up as well and began to sharpen themselves on the stone. When all the sharpening was complete, Magbangal told his implements, "Now you bolos must cut the grass, and you axes must cut the trees." The axes and bolos set to work swiftly and obediently.

At home, Magbangal's wife was surprised to hear the sound of many trees falling at a very rapid pace. "My husband must have found many people to help him," she said to herself. "I will go and see." She had not forgotten what her husband had said to her, so she hid behind a tree near their field—and was surprised to see Magbangal fast asleep on a wooden bench! She was even more surprised to see all the bolos and axes working steadily away with no one to wield them.

Suddenly, one of the bolos swung away from the grass and chopped off her husband's arm. Magbangal immediately jumped up and said, "I think someone must be looking at me, for my arm is cut off. If you are watching me, my wife, please show yourself now."

Trembling, Magbangal's wife stepped out from behind her tree, but she found that her husband was more sorrowful than angry. "Now I must go away," he told her. "It is better for me to return to the sky; and you, my wife, will have to go to the water and become a fish."

So Magbangal's poor wife was turned into a fish, while her husband went back to the sky and became the constellation known as the dipper, which the Bukidnon call Magbangal. His bolos became the constellation called Malala; his axes, the ten stars known as Ta-on; and his cut-off arm, the constellation Balokau. To this day, the farmers of Bukidnon plot their field work by the positions of these stars, so that they know when to plant, when to harvest, and when to clear the fields.

"We publish fiction. Why shouldn't a Filipino lifestyle magazine feature Filipino stories? I just have to make it accessible for our readers, that's all."

"That's a depressing story," Kit commented, her spoon stilled halfway back to her plate. "in the European version—it's called East of the Sun, West of the Moon—the girl goes after her man and wins him back. I think that's much more positive."

"This is this story, not that story. And stories are not meant to always be positive," the old woman said, with a touch of asperity. "They are meant to be true."

"And so this is, what," Kit pressed on, "your way of lecturing me that I should be obedient to my husband?"

"If you take meaning from a tale, it is because that is the meaning that you choose to see," Lola Basyang pointed out. "Your father believed it meant that truth can be unpleasant, but is best for all in the long run."

Rolling her eyes, Kit lowered her spoon for another bite of sinigang , only to find that she had consumed the entire dish.

* * * *

"You ate sinigang and listened to a story?!" Ramon asked unbelievingly, as they lay in bed that night. "Kitten, we agreed that you would go set her straight."

"I know," Kit said, trying to sound sorrier than she actually felt, "and I will, okay? It's not like we're moving into the house tomorrow."

"But the carpenters will be starting work," Ramon pointed out. "We're getting married in less than seven weeks, Kitten. It'd be nice to have somewhere to live after the honeymoon."

"Don't call me Kitten, I'm not your pet," Kit said absently. "I'll work on it, okay? Once I've figured out how to get Myra to publish the story."

"Story?"

"The Magbalang story, of course."

"Kitten," Ramon said, in that patronizing tone of his. He's just concerned about me , Kit reminded herself. "You are aware that you work at a women's lifestyle magazine, right?"

"So?" Kit retorted. "We publish fiction. Why shouldn't a Filipino lifestyle magazine feature Filipino stories? I just have to make it accessible for our readers, that's all."

"Well, you need to fool your editor," Ramon pronounced. "I do it all the time at work—you have to convince people that what you want is what they wanted in the first place."

"I don't want her to do it because I've fooled her," Kit said, annoyed. "I want her to do it because it's something that should be done."

"Whatever," said Ramon, and went back to reading his Asiaweek.

The renovations were all but done and the wedding was less than a month and a half away. The only obstacle remaining was this crazy lady and her annoyingly effective one-woman passive resistance movement.

Kit stared at him. He was just trying to be helpful , she told herself. If she stared long enough, she thought, she might be able to see a ghost of the man she had once fallen in love with.

* * * *

"Are you a ghost?!" Kit demanded, later that week. "The carpenters say they haven't seen hide or hair of you throughout this whole renovation. Do you have some secret way of getting in and out of this house, or am I the one who's crazy?"

"Why would I leave the house when I have plants to tend?" asked Lola Basyang. She was on her knees, working a trowel through the soil in front of her as placidly as ever. "You need to loosen the soil, you know, so the plant can flourish."

"Can you please, just once, answer the question that I'm actually asking you?" Kit was gritting her teeth, determined not to be sidetracked into storytelling or True Confessions this time. The renovations were all but done and the wedding was less than a month and a half away. The only obstacle remaining was this crazy lady and her annoyingly effective one-woman passive resistance movement.

"Yes," said Lola , unperturbed. "Was that the question?"

"No, it was not!" Kit glared. "Don't get smart with me. How are you getting in and out of this house? The carpenters and the guards have never seen you, but they've found adobo and kaldereta waiting for them in the kitchen. How do you get food, or—or seedlings to plant, for God's sake? Who the hell are you!?"

"I am Lola Basyang," the woman said calmly. "I do not leave the house I belong to. I lived with another family some time ago, but when there were no more storytellers among the Reyeses, I moved here. I have not left this home since, but I will if you wish me to."

Kit plopped down on the ground, having technically received responses to her questions, but no answers that she could actually make sense of. She wiped one hand across her face. "Listen, it's not that I'm throwing you out, but I just don't know what to do anymore. I don't mind if you stay, but Ramon wants it to be just the two of us. I'm grasping at straws for a solution here."

"When you reach out for just anything, you may not like what you get," Lola said pithily. "I know something about this."

"Now, wait—" Kit tried, but the old woman overrode her once more, and she soon found herself drawn into the tale despite her best intentions.

"Once," said Lola Basyang..  

there was a young man whose parents were urging him to get married, as they were quite old and wished to see their grandchildren before they died. The young man loved his parents and wanted to do their bidding, but he had already sought out all the young women from all the villages upstream, and had not found one to his liking.

As he was lying under a tree pondering his problem one day, he noticed an orange hanging from one of the branches, perfectly round and pleasingly bright in hue. He plucked this perfect orange from the tree and took it with him to the nearby river. At the river bank, he held the orange to his lips and whispered to it, "Go downstream and find me a girl to love." Then he released the orange into the river, where the current quickly lifted it up and bore it away.

As the orange floated past many towns and villages, people drinking, washing, or bathing at the river caught sight of it and tried to take hold of it. But the sly fruit always eluded them, dipping and bobbing in the water, and slipping and sliding out of their grasp. Eventually, it came to a village named Maryukan, where there lived a girl so beautiful that her parents would never let her go anywhere without at least one of her cousins as chaperone.

It so happened that this girl and one of her female cousins were bathing in the river when the orange came by. Delighted with the little fruit's perfection, the two girls made a game of trying to catch it, ducking and diving in the water for many long minutes without success. Finally, the lovelier girl, exasperated, said to the orange: "Please let me have you so that you may have me too." After this, when the girl extended her hands, the orange floated into them willingly. Nevertheless, she remained wary of losing the fruit again, so when the two girls dressed and went home, she tucked it under her skirt, near her belly.

Months later, the girl discovered that she was pregnant. Her parents were very angry when they heard, but the girl told them her story and her cousins testified that she had never even been near any man. Realizing that the orange could only have come from upstream, the girl and her cousin decided to set off on a search for the tree that the wondrous fruit had come from. It was a very long journey, and the lovely girl was close to giving birth by the time they were able to find the only orange tree in the region, which grew in the young man's backyard.

At first, the young man's parents were doubtful when the girls approached them, but then the young man himself came home and told them of the plan he had set in motion so many months ago. His parents were still not completely convinced, but they saw that their son was very taken by the pregnant girl's beauty, courage, and charm. So they held the wedding despite their misgivings—and a few weeks later, they were delighted to become the grandparents of a little boy who was the exact image of their beloved son.

As for the wonderful orange, it never withered or became spoiled, and the newlyweds kept it in a place of honor in their home, where it was later also cherished by their son and his wife, and their son, and their son's son.

She was becoming accustomed to the lady's apparently off-topic, but really-actually-relevant segues. "But I'm not sure I want to spend the rest of my life with just you and your stories, no offense."

"Okay, I give up," said Kit, completely unmindful of the soil that was now ground into her designer jeans, "what would my father say the story is about?"

"Why look to your father for answers?" Lola smiled enigmatically. "You will find the answers you want when you understand what your question is."

* * * *

"Only your fiancé would send fruit instead of flowers," Shelly pointed out at the office, a few days later. She was perched on Kit's desk next to the basket of apples, oranges, grapes, and pears that a messenger had just delivered. "So what did Ramon do to piss you off this time?"

"The usual, only more of the same," Kit replied. She was hunched over her keyboard working on the Magbalang story. "Go ahead and have some, why don't you?"

"I just know I'm going to drip all over my shirt, but who cares?" said Shelly. "I'm feeling citrusy today." She reached for an orange on the top of the pile, but somehow it slipped out of her fingers, bounced off the desk, and rolled across the floor under Shelly's own table.

Kit stared, as Shelly got on her knees to go after the elusive fruit. "I know," Shelly laughed, "I'm such a klutz."

"'When you reach out for just anything'," Kit remembered, unaware that she was speaking out loud, "'you may not like what you get.'"

"What?" Shelly asked, bumping her head on the underside of the table. "Ow!"

"You know what?" Kit said, saving her story and getting ready to shut her PC down and go. "I just realized I'm really not ready to bear fruit."

* * * *

"You'd better be ready to live with a slob," Kit told Lola Basyang, as they carried the last of her suitcases into the master bedroom. "I know Papa was tidy, if not always organized—I'm the exact opposite."

"You are your father's daughter, and you are also exactly who you are," the old woman said. "If Ramon could not understand that, then you made the right choice."

"I know," Kit sighed. She was becoming accustomed to the lady's apparently off-topic, but really-actually-relevant segues. "But I'm not sure I want to spend the rest of my life with just you and your stories, no offense."

"I would not expect you to," Lola said, looking at Kit as if Kit were the strange one. "After all, you should have a successor to carry on the family tradition."

"You would look at it that way," Kit laughed, amused to find that she didn't really mind. "You know what they say, though, Lola , a good man is hard to find."

"When you are right with yourself, the right man will find you," Lola informed her, beginning to unpack the nearest suitcase. "I know something about this ... "

Kit smiled and sat on the bed, ready to fold clothes and listen.

© Nikki Alfar

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