Remembering Balete Woman and past ghosts

Remembering Balete Woman and past ghosts

Geraldine Alimurung

In a dented and grubby yellow taxi, one sleepy driver makes a
left turn onto yet another side street. He does not expect many
passengers at 2 a.m., but holds out for the occasional fare
anyway.

The glow-in-the-dark plastic rosary beads strung up on his rear
view mirror stopped glowing hours ago and the days-old double
strand of white sampaguita flowers are turning brown. In Manila,
Philippines, streetlights ­ functional ones, at least ­
are rare, a luxury afforded only to gated communities and major
thoroughfares. Thus it is, as the story goes, pitch dark at Balete
Drive and deathly quiet.

The eyes of the woman telling the story ­ she worked as a
cook-nanny-putter-upper-with-all-my-7-year-old-shit at my dad’s
house in Quezon City ­ reflect the flickering light of the
single candle we’ve placed at the center of the small kitchen
table. During the frequent power-outages ­ "black-outs" we
called them ­ the maids told stories. So here we are, the
gardener, the cook, the laundry-woman and me, our respective
mosquito-bite infested bodies huddled together waiting for the
lights to come back on.

Carmen, our storyteller, is in her late 50s and has made us
boiled eggs, which we eat with rock-salt and sour mangoes. She
cracks the eggshells and tells us about the clicking of the rosary
beads, the driver’s fatigue, the oppressive heat of his taxi cab,
the constant smell of dried up sampaguita and motor exhaust. At the
moment it is pitch dark and deathly quiet in the kitchen, the
storyteller indulges in yet another rather lengthy dramatic
pause.

I peer furtively at the corners of the room, where the weak
light of the candle recedes and the blackness begins. I wonder if
the mosquitoes that fly toward the candle are afraid of the dark.
Balete Drive is a street that my 7-year-old imagination knows
well.

Although I’ve never been there, people describe it as a narrow,
crooked, pot-hole riddled road shrouded in a thick veil of twisted
dark trees. Secret things lurk in those trees, just as they lurk in
the clump of bamboo in our backyard; elves that pinch and bruise
the thighs of children playing at dusk, evil spirits that capture
and devour infants, mischievous imps that throw stones at nervous
ice cream vendors passing by on their way home.

I fear for this lonely taxi-cab driver, for I know that as soon
as he rounds the bend, something wicked ­ or at least creepy
­ his way comes. Sure enough, a woman ­ beautiful,
long-haired and robed in white, of course ­ rushes out into
the street. The taxi screeches to a halt. The woman gets in. The
driver takes off.

Apparently, she’s scared and very thankful for the presence of
the cab and the kindness of the driver. Her husband, she says, is
having another one of his fits. When he gets that way, she knows to
leave him be. The driver nods in sympathy and continues along the
street, waiting for the woman to calm down and tell him where to
go. But after several minutes, he looks back in the mirror and she
is gone. Nothing but the faint smell of sampaguita flower
lingers.

Did she jump out? Did he dream it? Did he actually drop her off
and just forget that he did? But no, he doesn’t recall stopping the
cab, nor does he remember any of the doors opening. Is he going out
of his mind?

When he awakes the next morning he reads the paper ­ The
Manila Bulletin, Carmen insists and points to the wadded-up
receptacle for the eggshells ­ "Woman Murdered by Husband on
Balete Drive, 2 a.m." That was years ago, Carmen informs me, but
still, every now and then, taxi drivers look into the mirror and
see a ghostly lady in white hitching a free ride.

I’m 21 now but I still hear about recent sightings of the Balete
Drive woman in white from various friends and family who return
from vacation in Manila. Whether she exists in any precise
molecular chemical structure is irrelevant. Although we think of
ghost stories as hackneyed and ridiculous pieces of fluff, Balete
Woman wields a certain amount of power.

This woman thrives on the belief, the very faith of the people
who repeat her story over and over again to generations of
wide-eyed kids. However lessened by the floodlights of reason and
logic this faith may be, Balete Woman and creatures of her like
come to life in that momentary "what if" that occurs between the
time we hear the story and the second we dismiss it as fiction. As
a child, I believed in her completely.

Fear fueled my belief, or was it the other way around? I feared
not only Balete but also solitary taxis, nighttime drives, darkened
streets, rooms and corridors. I feared the dark ­ the
possibility of discovering secret unknown things lurking within it,
the imminent ambush and subsequent capture by malicious green
boogeymen who sought not only to hurt and humiliate me, subjecting
me to countless tortures, but to rob me of my very "me-ness." In
general, if there was something to fear, I feared it. I was not
born, but rather hatched out of an egg … 100 percent pure
chicken.

Nowadays, Balete Woman’s given up her central spot at the head
of my mental dinner table since Biology, Chemistry, Physics,
Psychology and Math ­ the gods of science, practicality and
common sense ­ arrived. Occasionally, however, she manages to
sneak past their watchful eyes and snatch a bite or two. She’s
disgruntled and hurt, and out for vengeance.

She teases me and says that the darkness lurks not only in rooms
and streets but in people, in strangers I see while walking around,
in the minds of the professors who grade my papers, in the unsaid
words, opinions and intentions of the people who share my little
sphere of existence. She tells me that the darkness extends into
the future as well, that it’s scary and that I shouldn’t even try
to go there. At her worst, she whispers, "Cut your losses now, run
away and hide before the monsters get you."

Sometimes I’m weak and I give in to her seductive voice. I drop
a quarter or two, leave comments unsaid, look away when someone new
makes eye contact. She feeds on my belief in her and my disbelief
in myself; my insecurity gives her power over me. I wonder, like
the driver, "Am I going out of my mind?" and I lose my way.

But today when she crept up on me, I was prepared. I grabbed my
Chaucer book from its spot on the shelf, dusted it off, and with
it, gave her a good swift smack on the butt.

Get another taxi, girl; this one’s taken.

Alimurung is a fourth-year student double-majoring in English
and psychology.