Joysie

Joysie sat under her desert-tent roof raised up by wooden poles 6 feet from the ground. She sat in front of her wooden easel painting in water color. It was late afternoon. She espied a dust cloud in the far distance. It was coming straight towards her. She guessed it would be someone on a horse or motorcycle. She thought it was still hours away. She went back to her painting.

She painted monsters and only monsters. Monsters were her language. Using this imagery she could talk visually about everything, all that she believed in, all that ever happened to her, the memory of a baby she left behind years ago, a younger sister, an older brother. She could talk even about the most mundane things, a monster asleep, a monster flying, monsters kissing, loving each other. But they were always beautiful monsters, or so, her buyers told her.She wondered if the person approaching her trailer-tent was her friend, the former-congressman.

Once many years ago, she had been a government doctor working the route of native American reservations. She was doing well enough although life was always a constant struggle for her and for the people she served. Many migrants just like her come to America to strike it rich, maybe to return to the home country one day like a saving hero. But life doesn’t always work out that way. She had children, grown-up now and leading their own lives. She was once married. To her credit, she does sincerely hope he is happy now. She was free of most of her domestic obligations by the time they met. He seemed to her the strangest of men. They had a short affair though he would not tell her his real name. He insisted it did not matter. He was dying. He described himself to her only as a former congressman from the home country and asked her to call him simply, “Bai”. This word in Bisaya means simply “friend”. This was how they called each other.

He gave to her something quite so unbelievably strange. He told her it was a money making machine. She need not know how it worked. What he gave her was merely a list of bank accounts that were now in her name and from which she could draw whatever amount of money she liked. She thought at first it would solve all her problems. She was wrong. In time, she learned money was best enjoyed when you did not have enough of it. Too much of it and then it will enslave you. It will take away from you your life.

She considered herself quiet fortunate she was able to quit everything even remotely related to the money-making-machine. It has been years since she even opened any one of her accounts if only to find out how much money was in there. By her guess, the machine would still be draining money from the world economy at its fast scary clip. She did not care. She even suspected that it might have something to do with the global economic crisis. But she knew no economics. The machine was for her only another monster hiding inside a monstrous world. “That sort of life” was behind her now. She made her own money painting lovely monsters some of whom recalled her fondness for a strange wonderful man, now gone away. He might have been the devil himself, for all she knew. Would he be the man approaching her now?

She could see him in the distance on the open brush land. His wake raising up a dust cloud. In the distance, it was hard to tell his real speed. She thought at first he must be on a horse or a motorcycle. When  he came near enough for her to just make out his shape, she saw or thought she saw a man in white, possibly a priest, his eyes closed as if in prayer, standing on a shadow that moved at what seemed to her an impossible rate of speed. She thought, this must be a mirage. These things are common in the desert.

But as he came closer she saw he was only walking, a dark cat slinking inside the shadow cast by his white cassock which seemed to float beneath him in the desert breeze as he walked. She was about to say “What brings you hereabouts, stranger? But the man beat him to it. He said, “Maayo”.

“Na’ay koy sulat para nimo.” She was open-mouthed, speechless. She received the letter and began to read.

The priest peered over her shoulder to survey her painting. It was of a dark brown cat-like creature hiding under the shadow of a rock. Behind the rock a beautiful panorama of a blazing hot desert-scape with rocks and cacti. Strange wonderful creatures lay hidden inside every shadow. The painting seemed to say: Every shadow is a world unto itself although it lies half-hidden. To see it one must first have to search for it. What a wonderful picture that is, He thought to himself. “Nindot” was the word which entered his mind.