Manananggal by Elsa Valmidiano
In Philippine folklore, the Manananggal is an attractive woman by day. Manananggal isolate themselves from the townsfolk, residing on mountainsides or deep in the woods. During the day, she lives among people, searching out prospective prey. Her usual targets are pregnant women.
At night, she applies a special oil on her body while chanting a prayer. Fangs, claws, and huge bat-like wings sprout. She has long, matted hair with big, wild eyes. The upper half of her body separates from the lower half at the waist. Her intestines drape from the bottom of her severed torso as she flies to the roof of her victim’s house and looks for any openings where she can insert her long, thin, proboscis-like tongue and pierce a pregnant woman’s belly to feed on the fetus inside.
***
The Manananggal crouches in my womb, counting my little eggs as if they were hers for breakfast.
She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her, but we are cursed to inhabit each other.
Under a modern healer’s magic, with white coat and latex gloves, a magic wand is inserted between my legs. I watch my eggs grow day by day on a sonogram while Manananggal feels violated.
Welcome, Manananggal, to the 21st century.
She hasn’t let me win for the past eight years, depriving me of a child whereas I deprived her of my delectable eggs for fifteen years — hoarding them inside me with chemical weapon so that they never released, and the shedding of my lining each month would be an awful trick.
For fifteen years, she and I traveled the world together. She and I were never poor. She and I had nice things. She and I shared different lovers. She and I learned so much.
But I starved her.
She is now making up for lost time — eating all of my unborn children.
Payback, sister. Payback, she ick-ick-icks in the dark, the grating sound from her throat ick-ick-ick.
I take her revenge in stride. Not angry. Not sad. I learn to be patient.
I try to negotiate, holding my belly night after night — Please don’t slither your tongue and take this baby from me. Please. Please. Please. Be full.
Maybe, she says, but it’s always been you and me.
One of the times she had eaten my child, I had been at eleven weeks. The sonogram showed nothing but an empty misshapen circle — a sac and placenta and nothing else. I was told it was anembryonic, but in ancient terms, here was finally evidence that Manananggal had eaten my child. In the weeks leading up, I had a feeling she crawled into my womb while I slept as I did not feel the quiet hum of growth. I’d touch my belly the following morning hoping to feel the vibrations of existence. I wondered and wondered as I looked in the mirror and watched my soft belly grow, only to discover that a sonogram reflected my missing child and a vacant womb.
On the day of the removal, I had received a shot at the base of my spine, which made my legs numb. Husband was not even allowed in the room. It was just Manananggal and me. The modern healer instructed me to think of being on a beach in Hawaii. Manananggal scoffed, How can anyone think of Hawaii at a time like this? She then emerged from the prison of my body. She dislodged me at my waist while my legs remained on the examining table. Manananggal flew me to a place of distraction, away from the soft whirring of machines and the clang clang of metal tray, and I would feel my guts flutter as we flew away away away.
Once it was over, she and I descended back to the rest of my body with my legs tingling awake. My womb would feel the sharp ache of a bottomless crevasse while Husband drove us home.
I do not know how to make peace between Manananggal and me. I want her to know she is loved, but even then, I do not know if it is enough for her to forgive my years of wanting too much.
And so I count my little eggs as if they are mine, and I wait.
I wait patiently until I know, she is full.
This piece was featured in Issue 08 of Canthius.
Elsa Valmidiano is an Ilocana-American essayist and poet, whose debut essay collection from New Rivers Press, We Are No Longer Babaylan, was a recipient of their Editors’ Choice selection from their Many Voices Project competition in Prose. Her second essay collection, The Beginning of Leaving, is forthcoming from Querencia Press in Summer 2023. Elsa’s work is widely published in journals and recently appears in Anomaly, Cherry Tree, Canthius, Hairstreak Butterfly Review, MUTHA, Mythos, Pearl Press, and Sunflower Station. Her work is also widely anthologized. For more information, please visit her website.