PREVIOUSLY: A portly character who dressed up in scanty clothes and wore thick make up mysteriously settled in a remote spot overlooking the small town of San Pedro. Soon after her origin was traced to the fabled island of Siquijor she was branded as a witch. This was Concha, great grandmother of the son of our heroine, Ildefonsa. We left our story with the uncharacteristic late arrival of Concha for the Friday afternoon ferry to the Island of Cebu where she spends her weekends. This has never happened before and what was more unusual to the other regular commuters was Concha’s new look. Devoid of any garish makeup, she appeared modestly garbed in sedate cotton frock that looked like a maternity dress. As meaningful looks were exchanged, Concha matter-of-factly confirmed their suspicion that she was indeed pregnant. But what shocked them was the realization that the reclusive Concha could actually talk. In BBC English!

The dumbfounded teachers and the rest of the commuters on the motor boat listened in complete silence as Concha delivered an eloquent account of her pregnancy, when she was due and how her baby was going to be delivered.

Even the old engine of the rickety boat controlled itself from coughing as Concha’s every well enunciated word clearly floated on top of the lashing waves. Her declamation hypnotized everyone and soon after she had delivered her monologue, nobody dared speak nor murmur under their breath. Not a throat was cleared. The ferry crew, two teenagers who had the annoying habit of spitting into the water as the boat cruised towards Cebu, kept their lips pursed during what seemed to be their longest journey. This particular Friday sailing, it felt like they were heading towards an unknown destination.

There was no great hurry to disembark the moment they reached Cebu. Everybody waited for Concha to make the first move. Only after she waved a white handkerchief, perhaps to drive an insistent fly, did the crew rush for the plank and for the teachers to nervously gather their respective homeward-bound baggage of dirty clothes, bunches of prime bananas, fresh green vegetables, beautiful fruits, and cooped live chickens that too were silenced by Concha’s extraordinary exposition of language.

Across the imposing warehouses of a Cebu port they stood there like miniature figurines in a museum diorama, waiting for another cue from the unperturbed Concha. Another wave of her handkerchief, this time to dab what would have been her caking make up, and the spell was broken.

That made the male teachers alight first and true to an imaginary script positioned themselves in a neat row at the bottom of the plank to insure Concha’s safe and graceful descent. The women looked down as if in deep prayer and the men to avoid noticing her wobbly bottom, now even wider because of the pregnancy.

To everybody’s relief a (*)kalesa suddenly appeared and milking the situation, Concha let the men carry her bag and encouraged them to physically hoist her onto the long seat behind the kutsero, with great difficulty as the men deemed it improper to touch a witch, much less a pregnant one.

As the kalesa drove off, Concha turned around like the Queen of England and smiling sweetly to her subjects waved her white handkerchief at them.

The following Monday morning, the teachers were all in good spirits. They were very noisy in fact but you could tell that each one was mentally rehearsing what clever things to say to Ildefonsa, in proper English that could match her eloquence.

There was also a noticeable change in the way the teachers groomed themselves this particular

Monday morning, but nobody commented about each other’s effort to come well presented for another audience with their regal witch.

They waited and fretted for her to arrive with her usual giant bags of colorful goodies from the sidewalk vendors and back doors of the fabric factories of Cebu City. Six o’clock came and no sight of Concha, not even the sound of a single empty kalesa, for she never came. Last Friday’s elegant wave of Concha was the last they saw of her.

The boat skipper made all sorts of excuses to delay the departure but after almost half an hour there was a hesitant resignation to set off without Concha. They sailed in silence, trying desperately hard to avoid mentioning anything about a missing and important passenger.

Maybe they imagined that she was within earshot, turned into a mermaid, as witches are able

to, and was swimming with the playful dolphins that usually raced on both sides of the boat in the early mornings.

But neither the dolphins were present at this time. Everybody started to wonder, then worry, then feel sad. And as the boat turned towards the estuary, Concha’s colorful hut loomed large, the fluttering rainbow curtains now intensified by the sunrise, almost blinded the men’s eyes causing them to well. The women unabashedly sobbed.

Nothing was said of Concha for a long time. The people of San Pedro have lost an important

character in their dreary existence of childbearing, tilling the soil or fishing, more childbearing and dealing with the modern diseases brought to their once isolated stretch of Mactan Island by the necessity of importing teachers and the occasional straying of merchants from burgeoning Cebu Island.

Concha, of course, was yet another intruder but she was different. She brought contrasting colours to the everlasting greens of the hill sides of San Pedro and swathed the monotonous waves that lapped its shores with rainbow.

Sometimes the villagers question the so called benefits that connecting with the outside world

could bring to their village. They have always happily survived on what ever their land and the waters before them could provide and if somebody fell ill they had witchcraft to either blame or employ to their advantage.

There was a new atmosphere of uncertainty since Concha disappeared but nobody dared discuss

this important loss openly. The Cebu-based teachers started to feel professionally incompetent when they dodged and hushed an occasional query from a student regarding Concha’s disappearance, especially that they were the ones who last saw her.

Cebu City at this time was booming and the stories brought back by the more prosperous fishermen who went there to shop for hardware and nylon netting for their livelihood

were to the utmost disgust of the women of San Pedro.

When the wife of the town Mayor suddenly developed a frightful itch in areas only her gynecologist could describe, the popular Mayor who otherwise did his job efficiently was

not held into account publicly. The rapid progress in Cebu Island was blamed for the malady. Although the irritation could have stayed there if the Mayor didn’t “lose” his way coming back from an official business with the Governor.

The political quandary would have been in favour of the Mayor though if Concha was around so that she could be blamed for her witchery as has been the town tradition. A quack doctor would then be summoned to evoke for Concha’s forgiveness in an elaborate ceremony involving a

dozen chickens and endless bottles of the prized San Miguel Beer. By the time the strong antibiotics have done its job, all would be well and normal in the first household.

And then the seasonal typhoon came. This one was not as severe as the storm that presaged the mysterious appearance of Concha but blew it did throughout the night and relented only after it has successfully blasted her technicolor villa into the sea.

Nothing was said of Concha since her house was wiped out of the hill until one bright summer morning, a short but slim woman carrying the most beautiful baby the town have ever seen came to give the town Mayor an unannounced courtesy call.

She was dressed like a flight stewardess (with matching hat) who just missed her flight. The baby was fair skinned like her mother but had very curly hair that upon close inspection looked like tiny snails stuck to the baby’s head. The first lady was very pleased to receive the surprise guest but the Mayor was not amused.

To be continued.