Remembering Maria Marikyat

The bent down figure reveals years of hardship she bears, carrying her personal rubbish she holds dear inside a sack, dangling down her shoulder. The loose fitting printed sleeveless dress she wears, given by some generous lady, is now tattered and dirty. It perfectly drapes over her tired, gaunt figure shrunken by old age, hunger and thirst. Her unkempt tangle of thick grey hair is an idyllic haven for lice and bugs. The wrinkled sun-burnt face discerns traces of a young woman once fair and lovely, adored by every man, exploited and spurned, and left to live alone in anguish and despair like a human being she is now. Her eyes red and fierce, mirror the untold suffering and pain of turbulent bygone years. She keeps a large festering boil on her left leg bound in shreds of old cloth. She limps when she walks. She is barefoot. She is the mad beggar of Dalusan.

Everyone knows her. But no one knows where she comes from. They said she is from a village far away up on the hinterlands. But beggars are itinerant. And so is she. She disappears today and shows up the next. Sometimes, she goes away for weeks only to come back again soon after. Eventually, she makes our town her home.

She roams the streets every day. She begs for food and money, pulling together all the strength she could muster, hoping the alms would be enough for her to last another day. She prefers to wander around the busy alleys and stalls of the crowded fish market. Folks there don’t like her though, because of her aggressive violent tendencies. The men make fun of her. Commotion starts when she begins hurling stones at them. People would run for cover, for the flying rocks really hit hard. She shouts curses and blatant obscenities at her adversaries, making naïve women in the marketplace squirm in embarrassment. She is as fearless as she is brutally frank. When it is all over, she walks away grumbling, with her bundle of worthless possessions swung over her back. She looks for other places where she can beg and later rest.

At times, she goes to a nearby elementary school. She cranes her neck at the gate and shouts, calling and looking for her lost child. Pupils run in panic as she attempts to climb over the fence and pulls anyone within her reach. Some say, the loss of a child drove her insane. Others say, she lost a child during childbirth, and the post natal relapse, made her lose her mind.

Her name conjures up fear, mystery and deference too. Mothers warn small children to heed their parents’ calls, lest she will come and carry them away inside her sack to her house under a dense enchanted thicket of bamboo, behind the old haunted health center. She is every child’s living nightmare.

In the dead of night, you can hear her tragic wailing and screaming. Over and over again, she calls for her lost child. Then, she curses the whole world, and blames everyone for her misfortune. Later on, her candid sexual enticements resonate the cold night air. Only the barking of frightened stray dogs in the distance answer her mad wild craving.

Slowly through the years, sickness and old age take its toll on her…

A wooden cane now holds up the frail slouching bent down figure. A cold, blank, half-blind gaze replaces the once fiery stare. The pangs of hunger is visible on her face.

She slumps by the entrance of the new renovated fish market. With quivering dry lips, she stretches out her skeletal hand begging at the endless stream of people mindless of her presence. She hurriedly eats the sugared fried banana, a passing sympathetic soul gives her. The wailing and shouting are now reduced to weak, faint croaks.

At the day’s end, she fiddles the hard earned pieces of coins between her scrawny grimy fingers like an innocent child.

I wonder if it would be enough for her to last another day.