"Mimosa Pudica" by Danielle Batalion Ola
They say that old widow wakes at sunrise to trim her daughter’s leaves, but believe me when I tell you she gets up at seven at best. Perhaps, when she was young and her tits and hopes were still high, that early hour was within reach. But age comes swift, balasang ko, and I’m sure, like all of us, she had a morning when she opened her eyes to find she had nothing to look forward to, and thought: well, what’s the point?
She was a beauty once—the widow. The kind that makes you understand the old love songs with the bad clichés. Eyes like jewels, faces like moons. As a boy I thought, what horrible sayings these all are. My stupid friends did not hesitate to disagree. Back then, we’d scoff at such sayings. What sort of precious mineral is as brown as the eyes around us? Mud, only. If you’re lucky, sedimentary rock at best! On our nights out, we’d take to the streets, pinching each other’s peckers to check if we’d gone big at the sight of the moon.
All boys are stupid. Don’t be fooled. The problem was that your tito took the songs too literally, not that the words were untrue. A good woman’s eyes are like jewels because they are precious, not because of color or shine. And back then, the planes of the widow’s face would catch every ounce of light, and it was this power to reflect, I learned, this symbiotic bond beauty has with the sun, that makes a woman a moon.
Don’t look at me like that, balasang. Don’t you sneer. One day, you’ll see a woman just like this, or else you will become one, and you won’t be in the mood to laugh then.
Some parents hide beauty like that behind closed doors. They’ll tell you the choice is economic, that mystery keeps a daughter’s value high. But I think the truth is fear. If you saw how men fell at this woman’s feet, you would understand. On our way home from our long nights out, my friends and I would bear witness to their haranas. Such longing in their voices. Men who wanted for nothing starved under her eye.
She could have led an army. If she’d wanted, she could have waged war. It is lucky, then, that all her parents taught her to do was listen, for in the end, that’s all she did. She sat at the window, ear turned towards their yearning mouths, and at the end of each song, she would say: Next.
It was at this time that our lola went to our cousin and asked whether he might give it a try. You’ve never met him, and I doubt you would have remembered if you did. He was one of those sorry men who couldn’t be anything but unremarkable in the first meeting, such that you’d spring to introduce yourself again in the second and the third. But our Creator creates with purpose, and he was no exception. Lola would run to his house, heavy with gossip between the ears. Only our cousin could put the correct faces to the names of each starring character, and in this way, he won her favor.
She called him her barok, my cousin, and her barok could only have the best. So, lola urged him: Go to this woman’s window in the early morning. While she sleeps, those other terrible songs will slip from her memory. And you, my barok, will replace them with your’s, the first song she hears at dawn.
No one knows whether lola knew what talent our cousin was hiding. In any case, after many weekends of her wheedling, he took heed. And what a song we woke to that dawn, dressed in a voice so heavenly that even the roosters forgot to crow.
They married in the weeks after, with a great typhoon punctuating their vows. They stumbled home before the worst of it, and for years we would joke about how our bland cousin tumbled from one wetness into another. You ask your mother what that means. For now, what you need to know is this: their daughter was conceived under the glaring eye of the storm. A bad omen, lola thought. But she had orchestrated this—their daughter, their marriage, their love, if any—and so she kept her mouth shut as the woman began to swell.
How does the average man provide for a horrifically exceptional woman? Even today, the answer isn’t clear. So, like so many of us, my cousin decided it must be hidden elsewhere and carried his family in search of it across the sea.
In the wake of their departure, my own passions bloomed. I was a studious boy, and taught myself the scientific names of every plant in our garden before my voice began to change. Zingiber officinale is common ginger; Moringa oleifera, the malunggay you push aside in your stew. I learned that ube was Dioscorea alata, and that our neighbor treated his cancer by consuming it morning, noon, and night. As I watched him outlive his prognosis by one year, then another, I began to wonder of the potential hidden in leaves, fruits, bark, and roots.
I became a doctor in the end, and in my adulthood I tended to lola with pills and restorative teas. By then, she was the kind of old that turns your eyes and mind a cloud. I spent my weekends with her, telling her stories as I do for you now, about the solitary life I lived and the patients I’d saved.
One day, she called me to her side and said: go to my bedside table, barok. The ticket there will take you to a stone cast far from here, where a garden sits atop the sea. Build your life there. Find a good wife. Your cousin will guide you. Take it before your sisters see.
We had received word years ago that our cousin had passed on in the most uninteresting of ways—peacefully, in his sleep. But this only hastened me to accept her offer, before her generosity slipped through her memory’s sieve.
My voyage is a story all its own. Oh, if you could only see how the stars smiled on us, balasang. What creatures emerged from beneath the waves. But for another time, another time. For now, I’ll take pity on your tired ears and skip to the heart of it all, to the life that began with my cousin’s widow welcoming me to shore.
My cousin left his wife with a house of two bedrooms and a daughter named Chesa. Sweet, odd girl. She was fourteen when I arrived, short in stature and paper-flat, with skin covered in dry cracked patches that at a short distance away resembled bark. Her hair was unruly, straining away from her scalp such that one would think she was topped with dandelion seeds. But her voice was the note waiting on the lip of a wine glass, the prettiest I’d ever heard. So it was a shame, really, that she had so little confidence to speak.
It was Chesa who showed me to my room. Chesa, who helped me unpack. I would sleep in a storage room tacked onto the side of the house, large enough to shelter a wall of shelves stacked with goods and a cot and dresser for me. When the last of my belongings had been drawn from my suitcase—I only had one, so small—she turned to me and said: Then there’s my garden outside, kuya. Come see.
I’ve never seen an Eden so lush. The air outside was redolent with it—gardenias larger than a working man’s fist, the sweet rot of fallen fruit. I’m certain Chesa was to blame for it, with her green thumbs and little songs. She spent hours in the garden, weaving paths among the honeybees with a hum or full-throated tune. Every seed and sprout she planted flourished, if only to hear her sing.
Then as now, balasang, this country turned away the talents of doctors like me. But Chesa’s abilities enabled me to begin my own practice, a kind of healing far older than what you will find in any hospital. We located the crops that would serve me well—ampalaya, malunggay, and yes, ube too. After some conversation, we decided we would clear space for the plants we lacked beneath the guava tree. I sourced the missing herbs. Chesa sowed the seeds.
I introduced her to the names of each plant in sets of three. This one, balasang: Vitex negundo, or lagundi, or five-leaved chaste tree. She patted the soil around their tender roots and repeated after me. We populated my corner like this, leaving sambong, yerba buena, akapulko, and many more to root.
As the akapulko bloomed, the widow volunteered Chesa as my first patient, and Chesa silently agreed. For weeks, I experimented, and the widow slapped every tincture, salve, and leaf to the patches on Chesa’s skin. You should have seen her mother’s smile when she was finally smooth, her wonder as she reached across the dinner table to touch Chesa’s cheek.
It was one tender moment in a tempestuous household. In private, the widow confided in me. My cousin had left them so little—no business to inherit or money to send Chesa to school. It had doomed them to a modest life, with the widow spending her days stripping the beds and cleaning the floors of women more fortunate than she. But she was the sort of woman who didn’t believe in remarrying, or else believed that doing so would only invite more misfortune into their home. Thus, their only hope for better comfort was for Chesa to secure her own husband, and do it well.
In the late night, these worries would burst from the widow in sudden shrieks. The charges against Chesa were this: she had too smart a mouth, too flat a nose. She was too careless with her appearance, neglecting the few handsome qualities God had given her in favor of wasting time among weeds.
Chesa’s lack of beauty vexed the widow most of all. She believed people mocked them, I think. Look—there goes the moon-faced widow and her daughter, so painfully plain. When she wasn’t working, she was quick to call Chesa in from the garden to pinch at her skin, punishing her for every new rash, blemish, or scrape. In feeble attempts to mold herself an easier daughter, her hands would often drift to press against that unruly hair.
Who would have you like this, anak? she’d groan. You could be such a pretty girl, if only you would try.
Chesa would come to me for refuge. I’d let her watch me mix my remedies, and she’d stay until long after my patients were gone. When all was well and the garden blooming, she would sit there humming as I worked. But if she had suffered her mother’s rages the night before, she’d hover over my shoulder like a morose ghost.
One day, I told her that her mother’s rages came from worry. All mothers worry. She only wants to know that her daughter won’t be alone when she’s gone. And you know what she said?
But I’m not afraid of being alone, kuya. All other people do is ask more of you. At least then, the only person I would need to live for is me.
As so many stories go, there came a boy. In Chesa’s twentieth year, a young man staked new ground in a plot down the street. He was just as the rest of them, ordinary with the right stroke of charm. So what does it matter, his name?
He entered our lives as a mole appears on the skin, living alongside us unnoticed until the widow spotted him on his morning walk, striding past the garden gate. His family wasn’t wealthy by any means, but she knew that they owned a farm on the west side and came from good stock. That’s all. But that was enough.
Know that Chesa was happy, balasang. She’d grown into a young woman who lived a pleasant life, tending to her plants when she wasn’t working at my side. My business had flourished in the time that passed, enough to hire Chesa as my assistant for a modest wage and acquire the full use of the storage room in exchange for a generous sum. We were satisfied, sharing space in our clinic. But, as these things go, the widow was not.
The widow was intent on seeing the boy’s fortune in their pockets, Chesa placid in his arms. She pounced upon Chesa at every opportunity, always with a new dress, or lipstick, or perfume in hand. She primped and preened relentlessly, braiding Chesa’s hair as soon as she woke and slapping my salve to her skin before she fell asleep.
Chesa bore her mother’s prodding in silence, until she lost all sense of melody, of song. My patients would pull me aside to accuse me of abusing the poor thing. Deprived of her voice, the tips of the leaves in the garden went brown. All for nothing. No matter how the widow dressed her, that boy kept on passing by, and Chesa looked more miserable than she ever had.
The widow appeared in my bedroom one evening, glancing at the shelves stocked with bottles and herbs. She asked: Can’t you make a potion? A pill to swell her breasts?
I would have none of it. You know your tito’s not that type. I told her: What nonsense you’re talking. Look how you’ve hurt her. Your daughter won’t even sing.
After I snapped at her, there was a brief period of time when I thought the widow knew shame. She stopped harassing Chesa. Even those hands, restless to shape her, suddenly stilled. Then, one day, the widow came to breakfast carrying a small box, the first of her final gifts.
Inside was a straw hat, a pink ribbon tied above the brim. She held it up as a victor holds a trophy, pressed her lips to the crown of Chesa’s head, and placed it to shade the kiss.
She said: Forgive me, anak. I was only thinking of you. Wear this in your garden to shield your face, and think of how I’ve protected you when the sun is bright.
Chesa was hopeful but uneasy. She was a sharp girl, and one present would not banish the suspicion at the back of her mind. She wore the hat about the garden, but still, she did not sing. So the widow tried again.
She came to dinner with yet another gift, one she allowed Chesa to open, unveiling a watering can waiting in its depths.
She said: Forgive me, anak. I was only trying to provide. Use this in your garden and think of how I’ve nourished you as you pour.
This, Chesa accepted eagerly. All at once, her skepticism gave way to hope. A pleasant hum filled our mornings. She moved to the lilt of her own melody, improving my patients’ pallor and returning the garden to its former green.
I believed this to be the end of it; that in the puzzle of their squabbling, my naïve wisdom was all their fraught family needed to solve it all. But then the widow came to the dinner table with an envelope in her hands, and announced one final gift.
Inside was a song. She displayed it to Chesa, running her fingers across the music notes and faded words. She said: Have mercy on me, anak. If you’ve found the heart to forgive me, won’t you sing as he once did? It has been so long since I’ve heard this melody. When you’re ready, let’s begin again, the two of us, with your father’s song at dawn.
Chesa took the gift without comment. She carried her father’s song with her, from the clinic to her bed. In her spare minutes between patients, she would pull the music from the envelope and stare. Soon, I would be struck by the familiarity of the notes passing between her lips, only for her to go quiet before I could place the tune.
If the widow was impatient, she did not show it. She smiled at Chesa often, even laughed with her at times, and gone were the nights of her vicious tirades. Her hands stopped reaching as they once did, restless and eager to groom. And so, after a season of calm, for the second time in my life, I woke to song.
My cousin’s serenade was even more beautiful than I remembered in Chesa’s sweet voice, alluring enough to pull me onto my feet. I dressed quick, lighthearted, and peeked outside. What did I see? The widow, a moon in the window, glowing with a triumphant smile. Chesa, singing to her from the earth beneath. And that boy, plain as all the others, called by the most heavenly of sounds, lovestruck at the garden gate.
He went to the widow to collect her. Despite Chesa’s protests, their marriage was arranged. After so many years living in quiet, finally, Chesa cried. She locked herself in her room, wailing and thrashing until the walls bowed, the sound like the most heart-wrenching storm.
She emerged only when she’d exhausted herself. She stopped reporting to her work in my clinic, and lost interest in what once brought joy to her days. Her plants went unpruned and unwatered. The gifts from the widow collected dust. She sat in the garden only to watch the withering, and to make halting conversation with her hapless betrothed at the gate.
I took it upon myself to care for her plants as she wallowed, but it was no good. They wilted as the wedding crept closer, and Chesa along with them. No matter my efforts, Chesa would not smile. Her flowers would not blossom. Her trees would not bear fruit. Even the corner of the garden that fed my business went brown and dry.
When I was forced to turn away one too many patients, I went once more to the widow. I told her: Won’t you talk to your daughter? Try to understand. She only wants you to soothe her. She needs a mother to put her at ease.
What a fool I was. Chesa needed a mother, that much was true. But as all care, mothering is something practiced, something learned. I’d yet to realize it was beyond what the widow could provide.
The conversation they had on the eve of the wedding was the worst I overheard. Chesa hiccupped and sniffed and sobbed. On the brink of all she’d ever wanted, the widow could not find it in herself to care. She hushed Chesa’s weeping, so gentle as to be cruel. She said: Do it for us, balasang. Do it for me.
There was no warning the morning after, no haunting serenades. Still, I woke with the sun, overcome by a sense of joy at odds with the widow’s scream.
Gone were Chesa’s flowers, the fruits, the bushes, the herbs. The paradise she’d tended was overtaken by vines unfamiliar to me, with berry pink puffs and dark fronds that folded under the lightest touch. They came from the house, crawling from the open windows and the cracks beneath the door. Before I could knock, the door swung open, and there was the widow batting away the encroaching leaves.
Whatever she’d seen when she went to wake Chesa, she refused to say. She avoided my gaze, my questions, and instead tramped across the garden to tell the betrothed that there would be no wedding. In the midst of her panic, I stayed in the garden to study the vines. I found clusters of crimson seeds beneath the puff of its flowers, black-tipped thorns sprinkled along the stems. As fascinated as I was by their motion, I couldn’t bring myself to touch the leaves and watch them curl. I took in their strange beauty at a distance, watching their verdancy grow richer in the light of the gentle sun.
As voracious as they were, as devastating, I knew in my heart of hearts that these vines were no enemy of mine. On the contrary, in them, I found a familiar amity that put me quite at peace.
It’s all that will grow on the widow’s plot now—the plant with the fearful leaves. Though I’ve found that she’ll heal you, if you let her. Prickly as she is, she’ll purge your blood of venom, help you find the sun again if you’re feeling blue. People will call her what they will, but none of the names we have for her can describe how happy I imagine her to be.
And I do think Chesa’s happy, balasang, no matter what you believe.
What a lovely morning it was, the two of us in the garden. I hummed an old song as we enjoyed the breeze. Yes, what a lovely morning. What an odd and perfectly lonely weed.
Danielle Batalion Ola was born and raised on the island of Kaua’i. She was a 2019 Kundiman Mentorship Lab Fellow and 2020 Tin House Scholar. You can find her work in AAWW's The Margins, Carve Magazine, The Common, and elsewhere.
