House of Monstrous Women

ONE

February 23, 1986

Twenty-five years in Carigara and yet she still felt like a stranger in the plaza where she'd grown up. Women who should have been her friends leaned together, their eyes bright, their lips the same shade of rose red, given bloom by the communal lipsticks they'd swapped multiple times a day. Dirt-streaked children ran circles around one another. Men rolled dice on the street, throwing down coins as they made bets.

But all of them were watching her. She could see the way their dark eyes flitted to their peripheries, glancing at her again and again. She could almost see their mouths shaping around her name. Josephine del Rosario. The daughter of dissidents. A political orphan. The heir to a crumbling house and a legacy of blood. Perhaps even worse than all that, a spinster in her midtwenties.

She was so sick of it.

The same rumors floated over the courtyard walls into her house, month after month, year after year. Even the maids she'd grown up with, girls she'd always thought of as practically family, had started to speak with low, husky whispers. As if they were afraid their voices would carry in the dark del Rosario halls and worm their way into Josephine's ears. But not once had anyone ever had the spine to say a word to her about it. Everyone in town seemed hell-bent on pretending she didn't exist at all.

But today they were having a hard time of it, and Josephine smiled bitterly. She sat alone on the concrete bench of the jeepney stop, her long hair pulled back into a low bun, made shiny with coconut oil. Her father's old suitcase sat beside her, and she wore her mother's clothes. An ostentatious dress with bell-like sleeves and a long skirt, made of muslin dyed a subdued emerald. A decade out of fashion and a little too over-the-top for a ride deep into the countryside.

She could almost hear the wheels in their heads turning as they tried to find out where she was going. It was rare for her to leave the del Rosario house unguarded. And with her brother in Manila, she didn't have a single person to chaperone her out of town.

Her gaze skipped over the plaza, across the women slowly turning pork on iron skewers in market stalls, filling the air with the scent of sizzling meat. It was a smart business tactic to set up shop close to jeepney stops, when jeepneys were perpetually late and timetables were only vague promises. Plastic chairs scraped across the concrete nearby, and she glanced to her side to see the mayor of Carigara, flanked by his sons, settle at a white table only a few yards away. Eduardo Reyes held her stare as he leaned back in his chair, its plastic groaning, a satisfied smirk creeping across his wet lips. The woman at the stall rushed to put sweating glass bottles of San Miguel beer in front of him and his boys, popping their metal caps before rushing off to fetch a fistful of pork skewers.

A decade's worth of nightmares crept into Josephine's throat, but she refused to be the first to blink. He was the reason the del Rosario name was pronounced like a curse. In the light of a sweltering afternoon, he looked like any other old man on the plaza. Just a man grown round with age and luxury, his white shirt pulled taut over a sloping stomach, tucked into his black slacks.

He'd been lean when he orchestrated the death of her family eleven years ago. When her father had run against him on a platform that promised to push back against President Marcos's martial law and oppressive taxation. The combination had proved to be a potent threat to the incumbent Eduardo. For weeks during the campaign, her father and mother, and their cousins and aunts and uncles, had all piled into a caravan of open-air trucks to drum up support in the neighboring barrios. Music would pulse out of their speakers, filling the streets. Her father would shout out his joyful promises to the crowds that gathered around the trucks, and her family would distribute bottles of beer and bags of rice. The bright promises and gifts garnered them enough goodwill to win the votes of the people, and every poll pointed to a del Rosario landslide victory.

But a week before the election, her father's convoy had been rerouted by police cars and led outside town. The fine details of what happened next had never passed through anyone's lips, but the gunfire ended an hour after it started, and it left the sole coffin maker of Carigara hunched and solemn for days. Josephine's parents, her family, everyone who'd had the bad luck to be part of the convoy that day, were tossed into a pit that'd been dug days before, their bodies covered in a thin layer of dirt. It was almost insulting, how little they tried to cover it up. But the police were bought and paid for by Eduardo, and rumors swirled that it'd been Marcos himself who'd funded the guns and bullets that had torn her family apart. She and her brother, Alejandro, had avoided the execution only because their mother had demanded they stay home to study.

A cursory investigation had taken place, and a few triggermen had taken the fall. But Eduardo ran unopposed, and the roots of his political dynasty had only deepened since then. He and his sons filled the seats of the local office, following Marcos's word like biblical law. She couldn't tell if he just delighted in watching her squirm or if he was using her as a living warning to everyone else. Either way, no one had dared to run against him since.

Eduardo was a wart, but Marcos had been a cancer rotting the country from the inside out for the past two decades as he grew round and smug on his presidential throne. She could scarcely remember a time before he'd been in power. Of a time when the world was still in love with the young and decorated war hero dripping with charisma and medals.

But with each passing year, the effect of his rule had only become more prominent. The country had become lean beneath rampant inflation and taxes. The dissidents, once loud and proud like her parents, had been silenced by death, coercion, or greed. But now hundreds of protesters, emboldened by Cory Aquino, were gathering in the streets in Manila, demanding that Marcos end his dictatorship. Aquino was the widow of Marcos's most prominent political opponent, a man who'd been assassinated in full view of reporters. The protesters and the church had rallied around Cory after that, as if she were the Holy Mother given flesh, in the hopes that she'd deliver them from Marcos's evil.

And yet that ferocious, hopeful spirit still hadn't reached Carigara. Their little village, tucked between sea and mountains, was caught in the web of the past, drowning in the long shadows of Eduardo and Marcos.

There's no way those protests will end without bloodshed, Josephine thought. President Marcos and his cronies like Eduardo had proven time and time again that a bullet could be an easy, consequence-free solution to most problems. It terrified her to think that Cory, small and always dressed in yellow, with a big perm and bookish glasses, might end up like her parents. Cory was too tender, too full of bright aspirations that the country could find some happiness after so much pain.

"Josephine? What in the world are you doing out here?"

Josephine blinked and looked up to see a middle-aged man with a stooped back standing beside her. His age-softened face mirrored her surprise, and like her he was dressed too well for Carigara's plaza. His thick polo, while perfectly becoming for a doctor educated in the city, didn't suit the humidity of the day.

"Oh, Roberto. Good morning." Her tongue stumbled over the greeting. If there were a list of people she didn't want to see this afternoon, Roberto undoubtedly would have been second. He was the only person who seemed unfazed by the gossip that swirled around her, which kept everyone a lonesome but safe distance away. In fact, he seemed to have taken on a new, vigorous interest the moment she turned twenty. But any goodwill was lost by how close he insisted on standing beside her, how intent he was on trying to guide her life.

His fixation made her anxious in a way that Eduardo simply did not.

She struggled to push the exasperation off her face. The older man clucked his tongue. "I wouldn't goad him, Josephine," Roberto warned, without once looking at the mayor, who watched them over a fresh beer. "It's been a long time since that awful tragedy. But his sons seem quite content to follow in his footsteps."

Josephine glanced again at the table, and at the two boys flanking their father. They weren't much older than her, but they stared back at her with a stony coldness, like the cobras that made their homes in the graveyard.

"I wouldn't dream of it," she muttered.

"Good, good. Now . . . why are you dressed so lovely today?" His eyes flickered appreciatively over her, and she clenched her fist around her suitcase's handle.

Where is that jeepney? This was the absolute last conversation she wanted to have. And she hated the feeling of his eyes on her.

"I'm going to see my brother and an old friend."

"Your brother? A friend?" There was a disbelieving emphasis on that last word, as if it was hard to believe that Josephine del Rosario still had a single friend left in the world. "Not Gabriella Santos? I thought you hadn't spoken to her since high school."

The disbelief in his voice was palpable, and she couldn't blame him. Gabriella and she had been close as girls, but after the way things ended in high school, the two had barely spoken.

"Oh, she'll be there, too. It's someone I haven't seen in a long time." She chose her tone carefully, refusing to let the anticipation of seeing this old friend permeate her voice. She couldn't let him know who else she was going to see. She was almost certain that he'd forbid it-as if he had the right to do so. It made her blood boil, the way everyone thought they could control her life, just because she was a young, unmarried woman. If she hadn't been insistent on keeping the del Rosario house standing, a memorial and proud testament to her family and their legacy, she would have left long ago to join her brother Alejandro and Gabriella in Manila. But if she left, Eduardo would win. She could never accept that.

"Well, surely they don't expect you to go to them by yourself? Not without a chaperone?" Roberto asked, but it wasn't a question. He sounded unconvinced, and his eyes narrowed as if trying to catch her in a lie.

Josephine tried to smile, but it came out strained and thin. If her brother were here, she was certain that he'd have sent the old man packing by now. But she could feel eyes on her, and the weight of her mother's prim and strict upbringing. It was unacceptable for a young woman to raise her voice to her elders, especially to a man. More than anything, she wanted to snap. Instead, she reassured him. "It's not far. I'm not going to Manila, just an hour or two north-"

"It's not safe for a girl to travel by herself. I'm sure your brother didn't ask you to come visit him all on your own," Roberto protested. "You certainly can't travel in such a dress by yourself. What will people think? What will they say? I can arrange for someone to accompany you. My nieces are around your age-"

Down the road, the jeepney rolled into view. An image of Jesus wearing a thorned crown had been painted across its side, his weeping face Josephine's salvation. The jeepney pulled up to Josephine's stone bench, and a line of people slowly disembarked from its open back door. Hope surged through her chest. Her hands tightened around the handle of her suitcase as she waited for her chance to flee.

"Here, we'll go to the grocery store and call your brother together. He'll understand," Roberto continued, straightening, as if the decision had already been made. He laid a firm hand on her shoulder, fully prepared to lead her to where she needed to be. Josephine watched as the last passenger disembarked-a short, wiry old woman carrying a woven bamboo basket that contained two live chickens. The hens crooned softly, their eyes glassy and unblinking.

Looking at them filled her with a wild surge of panic. If she stayed, if she listened, she'd be trapped here. The moment the old woman was out of the way, Josephine pulled away from Roberto, darting away from his grip. Her free hand fumbled through her purse for a fistful of centavos and silver pesos. She shoved the payment toward the driver.

"Please, kuja, take me to Biliran."

The driver's dark nose crinkled, but he took the handful of coins and dumped them into a cut-open Coke can, where they clattered with a dull symphony.

Roberto stood, open-mouthed, beside the stone bench she'd been on just a moment before. He approached the long, rectangular window of the jeepney, his eyes not quite comprehending that she'd simply gotten up and left.

"You can't be serious, Josephine. This isn't safe. Be reasonable."

"I'm very sorry, Roberto, but I have to go," Josephine replied. She wasn't the least bit sorry. Instead, she prayed to every saint that the driver would push the pedal to the floor and leave him in the dust.

Roberto scowled and turned to approach the jeepney's door in the back, as if he meant to drag her out with limp-handed force. In the front seat, the driver leaned out his window and spat betel nut juice onto the street before revving the engine of the old, repurposed military jeep. The jeepney lurched forward, sending up a puff of exhaust, and Roberto was fading into the distance by the yard.

He called out after her, but the driver had already switched on the radio. Bing Rodrigo's mournful voice drowned out his shouts. Since Marcos had come into power, it'd seemed like every song on the radio was a sweet, melancholy dirge. And for once, Josephine found them tender, even welcoming.

Relief swept through her, and Josephine collapsed into the narrow leather seats, her shoulders slumping as if the weight of the world had finally slipped off her shoulders. Carigara rolled past the open window. First the markets, then the church, and finally the farms and their fields of rice. A new, buzzing excitement grew in her chest. It'd been years since she'd left Carigara, and she cherished every mile that grew between her and her hometown.