An old woman sits at the palengke weaving banigs with care and skill. Each strand reveals more of the pattern, a pattern of memory, remembered without knowing. It is a memory that is given to daughter from mother, whose fingers wove the colorful reeds with the same care and skill in the pattern from the memory of her mother and each one before. She weaves the reed strands in and out, over and under, weaving the reeds like words, the reeds into banigs, the words into stories. Stories from a memory remembered without knowing.
Donya waits nearby furiously fanning herself in the heat of the day wearing her finest pinya dress, handmade of course. Bought at Rustan's for dollars, made in Lumban for pesos under the watchful straining eye of a woman of graying hair. With each stitch and each hole she added, she added to its beauty and to the pain of her arthritis. Each night she rolls out her banig only to dream of the elaborate parties and socials that could warrant such attire. She works on, pesos by the piece.
A young girl, of maybe 6 or 7, who wears an oversized T-shirt and whose younger sisters rides her hip angled sharply out to the side, comes open handed and sullen faced to Ate Donya. "Piso po, Ate. Bibili 'ko pong bigas. Kaibigan ko po kayo, Ate. Piso po na lang." Without a glance she fans her away with the heat and the dust. A tinted window Honda PDJ 169 Philippines 2000 rolls up as if coming off the showcase floor in Makati and Donya is whisked away to the ballroom dreams of her seamstress.
Without notice, the weaver continues carefully choosing the next reed color in and out, over and under. And the pattern emerges.
The girl runs off happily with her friends wiping the sullen facade from her face as she picks up the clink of a piso dropped for her by a young woman walking the other way. She carries a familiar face but hesitates to open her mouth to reveal her foreignness because she is not completely from this world. This world that she half remembers, half knows, half understands. But a world that still haunts her in her dreams. Dreams of another life, another world, another people, built upon stories from her mother and grandmother. She returns to complete the circle that began in this land three generations ago when her grandmother crossed 14,000 miles over the great ocean to find illumination. Pensionada they called her. So, the woman with the familiar face returns with her family memory, hoping to unlock her own memory that will make her whole. Balikbayan they call her, but she does not know what to call this country she returns to.
She stops for a moment watching the hands of the weaver, the colorful reeds moving in and out, over and under. She finds herself in the pattern, the pattern from memory, remembered without knowing. They are the colors and patterns from her memory of picnics in the park and house guests that slept downstairs on the faded reed mat of her mother. But her moment moves on and she must move on in her journey to find illumination in this memory she carries, a memory remembered without knowing. With each step another strand is woven and the pattern continues.
She coughs from the billowing diesel exhaust from the jeepney that stops quickly a few feet ahead. The places on the side bear no translation for her and she walks on as another woman, around her age jumps on with paper and paints from National. "Bayad po." The odd and even shaped coins pass down the line and without looking back the driver returns the change while playing chicken with the air-con bus going the opposite direction to play leap frog with the other jeepneys with his same destination. First come, first served. "God Help Us All" lines the decor on the dash as he manages to pull back into his lane just in time before becoming the lead story on "Magandang Gabi, Bayan" and the passengers witness yet another daily miracle.
Mandirigma siya in the modern sense. A warrior for the land that whisks quickly by. She stares off watching the green land around her turn into hard gray concrete as she heads to another meeting of her katribu. They are tired of all the cute government acronyms that promise prosperity, but only if you can afford it: Green revolution, NIC, GATT. Makibaka, Huwag Matakot. They struggle for a new world in a future that they hope their children will not be afraid to face.
The jeepney stops to pick up a waitress just getting off work from the country club. PDJ 169 Philippines 2000 waits for permission from the uniformed man with the gun at the gate to enter their walled city, walled world, walled minds because the walls are just high enough to hide the shanty bahay kubos that line the other side made from a patchwork of metal, plywood, and other scraps. The country's greatest hero used to have a bahay kubo just like those along the wall where families of 5 or 6 sardine themselves each night on their banig that covers their entire floor. But, the country's greatest hero only used his for a toy. The guard waves them in and Donya enters her Emerald City that most people only see in the movies where the pretty boys open their mouths to sing love songs. The walls of the hallways are decorated with the unrolled banigs of the native peoples. O, how ethnic.
Mandirigma remembers being planted in that soil, a world that was never for want of need, but need for want. But, she uprooted herself years ago to look beyond the walls and now her soul fills with the need around her. Her parents look down shaking their heads wondering where they went wrong because they didn't send their daughter to college to shout down walls or to solve the problems of "other" people. She could have been a model or an actress they said. She laughs inside at the absurdity of such a thought of confining her mind and body into tiny boxes, 14" diagonal. At times upclose, the strands of her life don't seem to fit but only because sometimes the pattern can only be seen in the distance.
-Michelle Bautista 1996
Previously performed at Teatro ng Tanan's PinaysTalk show 1998, San Francisco, CA.