Our house
has a kalachuchi tree in the front yard. It’s always blooming, and every
morning, our mayordoma has to sweep away flowers fallen from the tree.
When I was younger, though, my father told me that we had two trees – one was a
gnarled, twisted tree that had been struck by lightning. It was situated in the
back yard. Apparently, my father had a friend who was an albularyo, and he
said that the kalachuchi was home to a White Lady, who favored my
father. She would make sure that dad would never be truly poor. But her
opposite number was in the tree in the back. I did not know what the albularyo
said about her, but my father had the tree cut down, and the ground where it
grew became the foundation for one of the concrete fishponds in the aquaculture
breeding complex built in the backyard.
Though the tree was gone, the darkness remained. That corner of the fishpond
system was always dimly lit, and full of cobwebs. Our employees would always
have accidents there, from stepping on a wayward nail, to slipping from all the
algae that seemed to bloom in that fishpond – and this would lead to stitches
on the head, if they were that unlucky.
When I did summer work by filling up aquariums in the morning, that area always
had the cruddiest aquariums, always with cloudy water. And I felt ill at ease
there; I was always happy to be away from that area – and at that point, I wasn’t
even aware of the story the Black Lady.
These days, that area is now part of a dormitory, and some things happened
again: dormers told us of invisible hands grabbing their wrists or ankles.
After a blessing was performed by a priest, those events seemed to disappear.
But for me, it’s still a question if the Black Lady lies dormant, sleeping in
the foundations. The White Lady in front, too has become silent; where once we
could sometimes see her walking in our front yard, now the mundanity of the
world has invaded most of our house.
But the Ladies are there, no doubt about it: our dogs still bark at nothing,
look blankly at corners, and avoid certain areas of the house.
