When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe

of a decaying house held together by chicken wire in some places, bamboo and rattan in others. It belonged to my aunt, a strange woman who in many ways resembled the house itself. Our room was nothing more than a small crawl space to keep one’s old boxes and throwaway items. That was what we were, Father and me, throwaway items.
    We lived in that room under a great obligation to my aunt, Father’s younger sister, and she reminded us of this at every opportunity. Below us, my aunt and uncle occupied one room with their teenage daughter, Rosalie. In the other room my aunt’s in-laws occupied a corner, with Rosalie’s brothers, Julio and Eduardo.
    I never met my mother and sister; they both died of dengue fever the year I was born. That same year, Father was diagnosed with tuberculosis and I with polio.
    My earliest memory is of my hands, raw from working endless days in the bright sun, whether it be in the cane fields, in the fishing boats, or from scrubbing floors in the wealthier homes. I was never a child.
    My only escape was to watch Esmeralda Cortez. She was a great beauty by any standards, and not just that of our little town of Blanca Negros. I once heard a man from Cavite say she was like a ripe plum waiting to be picked. He said that her coloring was at the peak of perfection and that to wait would be a sin because she would begin to fade. Her skin was taut, not too soft, not too tough, he explained. To select her any earlier would have been a disgrace. Any later, and one would miss such an opportune moment. She was ready, he said.
    I remember studying her after this man’s words. But I could never find anything about her resembling a plum. She had dark hair that fell like a waterfall.Her cheekbones were high and wide, so that when she smiled, her chocolate eyes tilted upward at the ends. She smiled often.
    She lived in the house beside ours, and each evening in the violet-and-orange sunset, I could see her clearly from my bedroom window. Our windows were so close together that if we were to sit facing each other, we could place a small wooden plank across our windowsills and pretend to have tea at the same table. But her room was larger than ours. Five steps down placed her into a bigger work area, where she greeted her customers. She always wore a long silk robe of emerald green, cinched at her waist by a matching sash embroidered with fruit trees.
    I was only seven then, an ugly boy with unruly curls and fat lips. Often I hurried home as fast as my polio leg would allow. I would leave Bonita beach with its tall thin palm trees and climb upward toward the mountains of abundant green rising hundreds of kilometers high, the airy ferns brushing against my legs, just to watch Esmeralda. I would arrive home, my chest heaving, and pull off my shirt to wipe the white sand and ocean water from my feet.
    I would go to Father and quickly give him his cough medicine, then hurry back to my mat, where I could watch her. Her room alone could hold me entranced. She had an oval-shaped table with two chairs where she met with her customers. Behind this, there was a wooden armoire with the two doors thrown open. There were four deep shelves ladened with wonderful bottles. The bottles were labeled with a strip of white paper handwritten in her bold script. There were tall burgundy wine bottles and small, stout cloudy bottles, all capped with cork. The labels all began with the words
Gamót sa
, meaning “Medicine for.” There was
Gamót sa regla
, for when a woman is menstruating;
Gamót sa pagod
, herbs to cure exhaustion;
Gamót sa galit
, a potion to fix anger; and
Gamót sa selos
, to cure jealousy, to name a few.
    On the bottom shelf, she had copper and silver flasks that were labeled
Kontra para sa
, meaning “To counter.”
    My favorite was a copper flask with engravings along the rim, though the label confused me: “To counter happiness.” Have you heard of such a thing? A cure for happiness. A mixture to make someone