Ghosts of Infinity: and Nine More Stories of the Supernatural (14 page)

“I’m giving you my Amboh’s janggay in exchange for yours,” I whisper to the rocks around. “I know you’ll want to use them. The little girl—thank you for bringing her back.” The breeze picks up, fanning my face and lifting my hair up and down briskly.

For the first time in many months, I feel like laughing out loud in joy, just like a little child.

There follows an awkward pause which I fill by inquiring brightly if he still wrote poetry. Oh, yes, I try, he says. In fact, I am here in pursuit of the Muse, he jokes, as he shows me a small spiral notebook with a pen clipped to it. Then you must let me read some of your recent writings, I say eagerly. I remember how good your poems were. But he only shrugs his shoulders and throws up those poet’s hands of his before shoving the notebook into a pocket. He turns away to gaze longingly southward to sea to where Jolo was located over the horizon.

Yvette Tan

It came in a shoebox, a shriveled little thing that could easily fit in the cradle of two cupped hands. Paco had thought it was a kitten. Dorian had taken the baby in his arms, his voice going all soft and indulgent as he whispered soothing nonsense in its ear. That was how Paco and Dorian found themselves a child.

Finding a baby on one’s doorstep causes a number of complications, at least if you want to keep it legally. The adoption process was arduous, especially for two gay men, but not so difficult that it couldn’t be expedited with liberal amounts of money stuffed into the right pockets. Still, it was some time before they could finally call Stella their own.

Stella. Personally, Paco didn’t care for the name but Dorian was a movie buff and had insisted on naming her after Kim Hunter’s character in
A Streetcar Named Desire
.

Stella, for Star.

Paco thought it was all bullshit, but that was Dorian for you: a tragic, hopeless romantic. The stories he loved were always the ones that ended in melodramatic failure. Paco often ignored Dorian’s erroneous wordplay and unsuccessful attempts at speaking English even though they grated on his nerves and made his teeth itch, attributing his patience to love. And didn’t he love Dorian? Didn’t he rescue him from that small provincial town, a boy whose only pride in life was winning the 1989 Miss Gay Pageant? Didn’t he give him a new name, educate him, initiate him into the comfortable city lifestyle to which his little barrio boy was now accustomed? Did it matter that their age gap was seventeen years wide, and that he wanted a girl every now and then? Was it going to matter now that they had a child?

Paco thought these things as he held the baby in his arms, her hungry little mouth attacking the rubber nipple from which flowed her nourishment for the night. He traced a pinky from her forehead down to the tip of her nose, marveling at her minute perfection, marveling for the hundredth time how, despite how small she was when they found her, she hadn’t needed any medical attention, that her pediatrician had declared her as healthy as a baby could be, even though she was thin and didn’t like milk very much. He was lucky. They were both lucky. Stella was a blessing. A perfect little angel who was going to bring them luck. Was this how all fathers felt?

Stella scrunched her nose and continued sucking. He still thought she looked like a cat, her almond eyes large and pointed at the ends, their pupils constantly dilated with irises that were more oval than round. The bridge of her nose was sharp, and her cheekbones were beginning to show prominence, just like her ears, which were slim and elfin, tapering to blunt points that reached towards the heavens. Never mind that that one of her legs was shorter than the other and that she would have a slight limp when she got older; she was his daughter and he would make sure that she would have the best medical attention to correct the problem. She stared at him as she suckled, and he swore that her eyes held a kind of intelligence that sparkled like stars. Maybe Dorian did pick the right name after all.

Dorian smiled as he lifted the baby to his chest, bottle in hand, the theme from
Titanic
softly issuing from his lips. Stella was a dream come true. How many nights had he stayed awake, praying for concrete proof of Paco’s love for him? How many nights? And the days before that, when he was sure that Paco was seeing girls. Girls! How could he compete with that? Oh, he knew that Paco used prostitutes; he could smell their cheap scent on his lover’s clothes. He could not help but feel insecure. Why should Paco need anyone else when he had someone to go home to?

Stella refused to be suckled, tiny hands pushing the rubber nipple aside while she screamed obscenities in her private tongue. Dorian was at a loss. She wouldn’t feed, she wasn’t wet or sleepy… what else could she want? He remembered a scene from
The Blue Lagoon
where Christopher Atkins put his finger in his newborn baby’s mouth in an effort to stop its crying. Out of sheer desperation, he stuck his own finger inside Stella’s wailing mouth. Stella bit down on it hard, teeth that weren’t there before biting down on Dorian’s delicate skin, drawing blood.

Dorian yelped, pulled his hand back, almost dropping the baby. He set her down on her
duyan
before bandaging his finger. The wound wasn’t deep. It would heal. He returned to Stella’s side. There was still some blood on Stella’s lips, red wetness licked away by a pink tongue that seemed too thin, too long to be human. There was a sheen in her eyes as she looked up at him expectantly. Did he understand? Dorian sank to his knees beside the
duyan
.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“I can take care of it,” Paco replied. “You rest.”

“I’ll do it,” Dorian repeated, getting up and putting on a robe.

When he had left, Paco lay still on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Dorian had been taking his responsibility towards Stella far too seriously lately. He had quit his job at the boutique so they wouldn’t have to hire a
yaya
for their child. He insisted on being the only one to feed and change Stella, which was fine since Paco despised baby chores. Paco couldn’t understand why such devotion bothered him. Wasn’t this what he always wanted? Dorian at home, away from the world, separate from others that might tempt him away? And wasn’t this good for Stella, too? Stella, who, until Dorian had been spending all his time with her, had been thin and mangy and had looked exactly like the thing she was: a baby they had found on their doorstep. Now she was plump and looked considerably more human; her acquired fat had filled out her cheeks, making her large cat-eyes look smaller, less threatening. Her once sinewy limbs and painfully thin torso were now baby soft and baby smooth, and when he tried not to think about her eyes and ears and uneven legs too much, he had to admit that she looked rather cute. That, and the fact that she kept Dorian home all the time, made him appreciate her even more.

Dorian returned, naked, closing the door slowly behind him. His right hand was clamped onto his left bicep where his robe was wrapped, the white terrycloth now stained red with blood. Paco got up, worried.

“Dorian, you’re bleeding,” he began.

Dorian ignored him, heading straight for the medicine cabinet and rummaging through it for bandages.

“Dorian, let me see,” Paco said as he approached the younger man and took hold of his arm.

Dorian jerked it away. “I scratched it on the crib,” he mumbled hastily before retreating to the other side of the room with the medical supplies.

“Scratch?” Paco asked incredulously, “It looks more like a gash, Dorian.”

“It’s nothing serious,” Dorian said as he bandaged his wound. “I’m going to the market tomorrow, Paco,” he said as he climbed into bed. “I think that Stella’s ready to be weaned.” He fell asleep, leaving Paco to wonder about the dazed, tired, but blissful expression on his lover’s face. Somehow, it left a bad taste in Paco’s mouth that wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard he tried to wash it out.

He watched Paco from the other side of the room, taking joy in the way he doted on their daughter. His attention returned to the tabloid he was reading, the one that said “Manananngal Looks Like Ex-President” in big red headline letters. After Stella had bitten his finger, he had started feeding her blood—pig blood, cow blood, chicken blood—bought on the sly at the local market. After she had taken a swipe at his arm, he had upgraded her meals to raw ground beef and pork: meat and fat fused together sticky-red, the smell of fear and death and slaughter making him sick. But the last time he had tried to feed her, she had turned her head away from the spoon, her little face twisted in both hunger and distaste until she had swiped at him instead. He had cursed her but she still refused to eat, and had later become so hungry she had bitten her own fingers instead.

Stella’s hunger had been too much for Dorian. He had left her gnawing at her bloodied digits, returning as soon as he could with a street cat. He had watched her from across the room, watched raptly as her small hands held the squirming cat still as her face contorted into a foul mask that looked more like an old man’s face instead of a child’s. She had slashed at the cat’s neck with her canines, which always grew when she was ready to eat, and emptied the skin and fur of meat, viscera, and bone. She had looked up at him after that—her first kill—and smiled. Her canines had shrunk back to normal, her cat eyes had lost the sheen they had acquired during her feeding. Innocence had returned to her features, which had changed back to her infant form. She was a normal baby. She was his baby.

Dorian broke out of his reverie. Paco was trying to lull Stella to sleep. He had Stella’s
lampin
draped over his shoulder where her head rested, to catch any drool that might fall. They looked sweet, a father and his daughter bonding, against the late afternoon light. Only…

“No!” He yelled, dropping the paper and overturning small pieces of furniture in his attempt to get to Paco in time. He snatched Stella away from Paco, ignoring the strange look on his lover’s face. Stella gave a grunt of discontent, her fangs receding into her gums. She eyed him curiously.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” Paco asked, confused.

“I, uh, thought she was going to pee,” Dorian said lamely. “Forgive me.” He kissed Paco’s cheek and, with shaking knees and trembling fingers, went into the kitchen and sat Stella down on her high chair. He took a chair and sat in front of her so that their faces were level and they were staring eye to eye.

“That was bad,” he said. “What you did was bad.”

Stella gave him what amounted to an innocent look.

Dorian nodded. “You leave papa Paco alone, okay? Let Papa Dorian do the hunting.”