Ang Babae (The Woman)

by Patricia Ramos

AN: Something I composed in the car last night. Might record it later.

For heroes. And Sir Bigs.

***

I love a woman,

But I hate a woman. No. I despise her. I'm disgusted by her. Sometimes, the very thought of her infuriates me into the red of my blood and the white of my bones.

She loved thrice, but she was no whore. 

The first took her maidenhood just when she was a girl all her own. He taught her how to pray, and he taught her how to cover up, and taught her that almost everything about her was bad

and she believed him. 

300 years, she believed him, to the point that she smelted herself down and tried to fit herself into the mold of his ideal woman (even though, deep inside, she knew she never could be). She took his words and stuffed them into her flesh until she shone in all shades of glutathione-white and dumbly followed with angel-like veneration. 

Sometimes, she came to her senses and tried to fight, tried to convince him that she was more than he made her out to be. Always, always, she failed. 

And when she had practically become what he wanted her to be, and almost - almost - lost everything she was, he was taken away.

The second was gallant and blonde and tall, and filled her pretty little mind with the Charlston and green, across-the-bay eyes and Coca Cola. 

He was her knight in shining aluminum armor and the way she reflected off of it so bright and blinding made her squint and think that it was all him when in fact, it was all her. He was just trying to show her.

But soon all she ever wanted was to be just. 

Like. 

Him. 

He swept her off her feet and drank her like a rootbeer float, and all that filled her mind was gaining his approval, and pleasing him, and being just, like, him. He kissed her silly and promised her all sorts of things like change and education and electricity, and even though he did give much of this to her she began to forget she was also her own person. 

She was infatuated with thoughts of a foreign dream and told herself that when you make it there, you make it anywhere, until she forgot "there" was here all along.

The third was a surprise. The white sheets on her bed were stained with a single circle of blood red and even in the morning she couldn't bear thinking about a rising sun. He built a cross upon her lung and until today she has trouble breathing because of it. Then she was the damsel in distress who had to be swept out of a misery by her blonde and blue-eyed Hercules.

When it was time for her second beau to leave she was practically learning how to walk again. Her thin little fawn legs top-heavy with the weight of a war past, her hair no longer as black and lustrous and long as before, and her heart so dark and greedy it infected those of the poor young provincial lads who ever dared to venture there, who ever dared to make it there.

I hate a woman. But this is not her fault.

Her family members crowd around her with relics and surgical needles and curfews and campaign posters, telling her she needs nothing but approval from everyone else but herself. She was young when she was taught that what she was was never satisfactory, and when she was cursed to never think herself worthy of anything, even her own self-confidence.

This is not her fault.

I hate a woman. But I love a woman.

I loved her when, finally, she stood up against a brother who told her never to speak up when it was against him. He was clever when he clothed her in grey and forced her into shoes that were white and way too small for her. 

He called her gorgeous around other people but went to lengths to hide how ugly he found her. 

He made friends with her second boyfriend, his yellow hair now streaked with salt and pepper, and sometimes lent her out to him just for dollars and dollars and dollars. Her ex told her he could never do that to her, because she loved her, even though it was no longer in that way. He paid her brother anyway.

One day, she came out of her room in all yellow - a yellow dress, a yellow headband, yellow shoes that fit her perfectly - and when he told her to go back to her room and change into her proper clothes she kicked him all the way to Hawaii. She won.

I love her for this. I remember, even though to her it is a distant memory.

I love her for the sun in her coppered, ruddy skin, and the stars in her chocolate eyes (three in each one). I love her for the way her nose was wideset and snubbed, and the rough, grizzly twang in every English enunciation. I love her for all the ways she talks. I love her for the days where she smells like crushed sampaguita and the nights where her scent is dama de noche. I love her for she is home.

I love her for what she is, and I love her even though she does not know it.

I hate a woman only because she does not know how to love herself.