What just happened?" I ask aloud, shaking my head to dispel the fog
clouding it.
"Pa?" "Honey!" I called out for my husband. "Paaaa!" I shouted, my voice slicing through the stillness, desperation lacing each syllable.
Silence hung in the air, a hea...
The farmer and his wife continued to manage their expanded "lapangan," a small patch of field. This is their "bujur "(baol), a piece of land, a part of the rainforest clearing at the far edge of the village that they claimed.
Bawang, or garlic, has a long growing season. A small planted garlic clove takes 8 to 9 months to mature into a ready-to-harvest garlic head.
"The same amount of time it takes to conceive and birth a human baby." Inang once told Ayu this when she complained about the offensive smell.
They grew bawang to barter in the lower lands or sell to the pedadang keliling mountain peddlers to earn uang money to provide for their daughter's needs.
Ayu refused to help because she could not bear the sun's glare and searing heat, which blinded her. And she hated the smell of garlic herb that gave her a knot in the pit of her stomach; even as a child, she would be queasy and on the verge of retching.
And even if she did offer to help, her parents dissuaded her from doing so, for they were aware of the agony she would experience from sunburn.
Under the pale moonlight, shielded by the bamboo grove's foliage and her mother's watchful eye, Ayu would bathe in the river, immersing herself in the cool water.
She would scrub her skin raw with a lugod, a volcanic pumice stone. And she cleansed it with the slimy, soothing gel of a dilang-halo, the soft succulent aloe plant, to wash off the garlic stench that clung to her hair, her skin, and her clothes.
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Ayu was known to love purple. To please her, they said, was to give her something purple! Purple flowers, woven sashes, beads, or slippers.
But to her, it was because Tyrian purple was the color of royalty—an idea she gathered from the pedagang keliling. These traveling peddlers, who occasionally came up to the mountain villages to peddle their wares, brought stories of faraway lands, tales of great riches, and royal grandeur.
She collected golden trinkets and woven fabrics, insisting that they eat from porcelen wares rather than the bagul, or coconut shells, that her parents were accustomed to.
The pedagang keliling, or wandering peddlers, brought these goods from the Cina kapal layar, Chinese sailing vessels that visit the island to trade among the natives.
