Yanggaw
(yang-gaw)

The process of being turned into an aswang through ingesting aswang saliva.

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Micah found out the next day what happened.

She'd decided to sleep later than usual, since it was Saturday anyway, but lay awake after punching her alarm, making plans for the house. She ran downstairs at 8:30, bubbling with ideas, only to find Manang Norma and Manong Tino looking serious as they discussed something at the kitchen table. Manang Norma got up to pour her a cup of coffee, while Manong Tino pulled out a chair.

"Is there a problem?" she asked as she sat down. "You both look worried."

Manong Tino shook his head quizzically and said, "You have to promise us that whatever you do, wherever you go, you will be back here before  nightfall."

Before she could voice an indignant objection, Manang Norma laid a hand on her arm.

"We're worried about you, Micah. There have been aswang sightings lately, and last night-- a girl just a few years younger than you was almost attacked."

"We don't know what we'll say to your father if anything happened to you," Manang Norma added. "Your mother would haunt us for the rest of our days."

Micah didn't really believe in what they were saying about aswang, but she could feel they were genuinely afraid for her. She patted Manang Norma's hand gently.

"Okay, if it makes you feel better," she said "I'll always be back at nightfall."

But that was not the end of the matter. The two insisted on giving her what amounted to a crash course in aswang lore, much to her (hidden) amusement.

"If you should meet someone on the road, especially after sunset or before sunrise," said Manang Norma, "greet him or her. Don't wait for the other person to speak first, because if it is an aswang and it speaks first, it will have power over you and you won't be able to escape it."

"You have a habit of looking people in the eyes," Manong Tino added. "This is good, but if an aswang catches you looking in its eyes, it will come after you."

Micah frowned; she'd heard that before, from the woman at the market.

"It will run after you," Manong Tino explained, "because it fears that you noticed that your reflection in its eyes is upside-down. Because an aswang can look like an ordinary person most of the time. It can go around like an ordinary person, and eat or drink like an ordinary person. But once the sun is not in the sky, it can change into a shape that makes it easy for it to hunt. And when the moon is full, it gets hungry for raw meat and blood and doesn't care where or how it feeds. It has to feed once a month or it will get weak and die."

While he was speaking, Manang Norma put breakfast on the table. As Micah reached for the rice, Manang Norma said, "And that's another thing, Micah.  Be careful about what you eat. When you are among strangers, don't be too eager to eat what is offered, if you don't want to end up an aswang yourself."

"Really, Manang Norma?" she asked while putting rice on her plate. "Even food?"

"It's... not exactly the food," Manong Tino put in. "It's the saliva. If they want to turn you into one of them, they'll put their saliva in your food. You'll start turning into an aswang, although you won't be a full aswang until you eat raw flesh and blood at the next full moon. It's called yanggaw."

Micah dropped her spoon and gulped. "Ew, gross. Ugh. Yuck!"

"Micah, you're not eating," Manang Norma said after a while. "I thought you like sausages."

Micah smiled weakly and cut off the end of a sausage on her plate and put it in her mouth. She still didn't believe in the aswang, but the thought of inadvertently eating someone else's spit made her stomach queasy.

"And if you don't have anything else to do this morning, maybe you'd like to come with me to the store," Manang Norma continued.

"Sure," Micah said, gulping hastily. "Do we need anything?"

Suddenly she craved a frappe, but since that was surely not available, even Coca-cola would do.

***

By the time Manang Norma had finished cleaning up and was rummaging for her purse on top of the kitchen cupboard, Micah was clattering down the stairs fresh from her bath in flowered leggings and a long t-shirt, a small purse on a long strap slung across her body. She stopped short when she heard the two older people talking.

"I don't know why Caridad never told her daughter about this. She grew up here, she knew these things," Manang Norma fretted.

"Perhaps she thought it wasn't necessary, that Micah would never come here," Manong Tino said. "I can't blame her. Maybe she intended to forget."

"And now Micah's here anyway," Manang Norma mused. "Much as I have come to like her-- she reminds me so much of her mother-- I'll never be easy in my mind until she's safely gone home."

"I think I heard her coming down the stairs," said Manong Tino, and that was Micah's cue to breeze into the kitchen with a smile on her face.

***

When they got to the store, Micah realized why Manang Norma had wanted to go there.

"The store" was a residents' cooperative, located beside the small plaza at the center of the barrio. Beside it was a small building with the sign "Barangay Hall and Health Center." Behind the plaza was a small chapel, a rough cement-and-wood structure with a galvanized-iron roof topped by a bamboo cross. Manang Norma explained that the local lay coordinators (laycos) held Bible services there on Sunday mornings, and unless they went to church in town, they only had Mass once a month when the parish priest was scheduled to visit.

The plaza was just a stretch of concrete big enough for a basketball court, with a raised, covered stage at the far end. The barrio boys were playing basketball, and a small group of young people sat on the stage watching, occasionally cheering and jeering as needed. Heads turned as Micah and Manang Norma passed by. The men sitting on the small porch of the barangay hall stopped talking and waved. The women clustered and busy discussing something in the store's yard also turned with welcoming smiles when the two entered the gate.

Gossip central! Micah thought as they became surrounded by a curious crowd. Manang Norma performed some introductions, and Micah met some distant relatives, if "your grandmother's mother's first cousin's granddaughter" was still a relative. It apparently was especially if there were no closer relatives.

Micah had had lots of practice with her dad's side of the family in Bulacan, who were a curious and voluble lot, and fielded questions with Manang Norma's help. Her ear for the language was also improving-- she could pick out some words she understood. Then she remembered the guy she;d met the other day, and realized he had been speaking to her in Filipino.

Where do you live in Manila? Do you have a job? What does your father do? Where did you go to school? Did you see many celebrities? Do you go to ABS-CBN to watch the studio tapings? Do you get to watch the concerts by foreign singers?

Hiding her amusement at the assumption that being a resident of Manila meant you got to know a lot of celebrities, Micah answered as politely as she could, then took advantage of a lull in the conversation to excuse herself and buy a bottle of Coca-cola. Sipping from it deterred the rest of the questions everyone wanted to ask her, and conversation returned to other topics, notably the previous night's aswang scare. Since the would-be victim was also present and holding forth about her ordeal, Micah wasn't inclined to put much credence in the story. She thought it would be something to blog about though, so she asked Manang Norma for translations.

The girl, a well-nourished, well-cared-for sixteen-year-old, had been hurrying home from visiting a friend who lived on an outlying farm. She'd have taken her bike and gotten there and back sooner, but her brother had borrowed it, so she just walked fast. They'd got to talking, until she realized with a start that it was nearly sunset.  She was between the quarry and the barrio as the sun went down, and suddenly there were two men just behind her, following her. No matter how fast she walked, they just seemed to be gaining on her. Then she looked back and there were three of them. Then she looked back again, and they were gone-- and three big black dogs were running at her. She screamed and screamed and screamed, and suddenly something rushed past her-- and the dogs disappeared, so she ran for her life.

You never know just what you might meet in the darkness-- perhaps it will be something that will eat you.

Suddenly, Micah seemed to hear his voice repeating those words. She flinched in spite of herself. The girl's story was certainly scary, even without the aswang factor. Three big dogs! Micah would have screamed like a banshee too, if three big dogs were at her heels.

I know how to handle dogs, she'd said. There are worse things than those, he'd said.

The girl's scream was the one she'd heard, Micah realized. It was just before he'd disappeared.

She'd lost the gist of the conversation, and paid attention just in time to catch the name "Dorian." A familiar name, though she couldn't remember where she'd heard it. She looked to Manang Norma for explanations.

The girl couldn't see the men's faces-- the sunset was behind them, and it was rapidly getting dark. She thought one of them was her classmate, though, a boy named Dorian who lived in the sitio on the other side of the hill. But she wasn't sure. But she'd told Dorian off a month or so ago before school let out, because he kept annoying her. If he were really an aswang it figured-- maybe he was trying to get back at her for telling him off. There had always been something strange about that family...

Manang Norma suddenly remembered it was late morning and she needed to start preparing lunch. She dragged Micah off to the store itself. Micah returned her empty bottle, swooped in with the cash before Manang Norma could dig around in her purse to pay for her purchases, and lifted the plastic bag. Manang Norma followed her back out, protesting, as she made her way through the crowd, nodding and saying goodbye to the people she'd met.

"Micah, you know perfectly well that I can afford to pay for those," Manang Norma scolded as they walked home.

"It's not that, Manang Norma-- I simply wanted to, that's all," said Micah, avoiding the elder's attempts to take the plastic bag. "Also, I wondered if I could go to town this afternoon-- I want to call Daddy, and I can't from here."

"This afternoon? You'd do better to wait until tomorrow morning," Manang Norma said. "There are five tricycles in the barrio, but with your luck they'll all be in town waiting for passengers. Better to go tomorrow morning, when people are going to the church in town."

Micah stared. "Only five tricycles?" she asked.

"Well, four really, since your cousin Titoy doesn't usually take passengers; he just uses his tricycle to ferry his family around on errands, as he doesn't really need the income and the other drivers find it hard as it is to come home full of passengers unless it's Sunday or Market Day." Manang Norma paused. "Hm, that's a thought-- would you like me to ask him if he could ferry you around?"

"That would be nice, Manang Norma- um, how much will he charge?"

"Hm, I don't know. I'll ask him."

"Oh, that reminded me! This depends on what Daddy will say after I talk to him, of course, but would you and Manong Tino go with me to town sometime? We could go shopping and eat at a restaurant..."

"Restaurant, child? You'll have to go to the capital for that-- we only have carinderias here. The only restaurant we have in town opens only for special occasions."

"We'll go to the capital then! It's not that far away, right?"

"If we wake up very early in the morning, and leave at six, we can be there by eight or nine," Manang Norma said. "Then we can leave by three and be home before dark."

Micah made a face, then apologized.

"It's just that things move so slowly here," she said. "I seem to need to wait a lot. When I came here that very first day, I had to wait for almost an hour for the tricycle to fill up-- and then it was so full that people were sitting on the roof and hanging on to the sides, and I thought we were going to turn over or something each time we passed over a rut."

Manang Norma laughed and held their gate open for her. "As I said, it's hard for them to get passengers, since not a lot of people come here," she said. "So they wait until the tricycle is full. Also, since there are only four tricycles, no one knows when the next tricycle will come along, so they try to fit in everyone who wants to get a ride."

"I'm sure there's something wrong in that system somewhere," said Micah, "but I can't see it at the moment. Also it's kind of irritating that now I know it's hard for me to get them I keep craving all sorts of stuff like ice cream and frappes."

"What's a frap?" asked Manang Norma.

Micah described fraps, frozen yogurt, and all the other things she missed, while they walked into the house, while Manang Norma made lunch, and all through lunch as well.

"More than a hundred pesos for a cup of coffee," said Manong Tino, shaking his head after listening to them.

"Well, it's not a cup exactly, Manong," said Micah. "It's at least as big as your juice tumbler."

"Still," said Manong Tino. "A big tumbler full of coffee-- that must keep you up all night! And it's still too expensive!"

"But it's imported coffee!" Micah said. "There's coffee from Indonesia and South America, even."

"Eh? What's wrong with our own native coffee? Give me a cup of home-ground coffee any day," said Manong Tino. He looked at his wife, who looked sternly back at him.

"You get your next cup at three with the afternoon merienda, and not before," she said. "Micah, have you any laundry?"

"Oh! Yes, I've been meaning to ask you about that, Manang," Micah said. "Do you have a washing machine...?"

"No," said Manang Norma before her husband could answer lugubriously. "Which is why I asked, because it's been three days, and I haven't seen you wash anything, so your laundry must be piling up."

"Wash?" Micah said faintly. "By hand?"

Manang Norma nodded. "I can do it for you," she said, "if you put it in the laundry basket..."

Micah fled to her room after lunch and began feverishly sorting dirty laundry. She ended up sitting side by side with Manang Norma in the batalan, a wall-less bamboo shed that sheltered a cement tank of water and the pump, washing her underwear while Manang Norma washed her other clothes and Manong Tino kept the tank full. They finished in time for merienda, which they took out on the terrace since it was a sunny but windy day. Assorted neighbors and relatives passed by and some joined them, but Micah didn't see-- She mentally shook herself when she caught the thought-- why was she looking for him?

Dear self, she tweeted in her mind. I seem to be going bonkers over a guy whose name I don't even know. Or maybe I'm just bored.

She was up bright and early the next morning.

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Note: Vocabulary

Layco - short for "lay coordinator," a member of the Catholic laity who is empowered to conduct a Bible service in communities when there is no priest available. In remote rural communities, the priest usually comes by only a few times a month. If people can't make it to morning Mass in the church in town on Sundays, they attend Bible services at the barangay chapel instead.

Barangay - the smallest local government unit in the Philippines. See "barrio."

Tricycle - Mode of public transportation, consisting of a motorcycle with a sidecar, capable of carrying three (in the cities) to eight and even a dozen (in the rural areas) passengers.

Merienda - snack, usually at 3:00 PM.