Philippine Speculative Fiction by Andrew Drilon Page A

often his daughter would come into the house and feed herself handfuls of mushed banana on the windowsill
with him, as if feebly aware of his transformation. She said nothing, for she had always been a quiet child; unnervingly so, from birth, and had only learned to speak when forced to in the special
school she went to before. When she took a nip at one of his leaves or dug a few of her fingers into the soil, Oscar would recollect, briefly, how her stillness disturbed and saddened him, and also
feel a kind of delicious warmth that his former internal organs and human capabilities had denied him. But now he understood her predilection and they would sit together in silence, weighed down
with unknowing, mutual affection.
    ALL THE MONEY ran out within months. The comfort of money was a false security, and without Oscar, his wife knew she would be reduced to nothing in a matter of weeks. She
became a fixture at the police precinct and local radio stations, pleading into the mic for a husband she secretly wished would not return, and a daughter she openly used to gather pity. Oscar
would recognize her voice, bristling with the strange residual human emotion he knew was guilt. Whatever it was that had remained of the human Oscar in his plantly incarnation struggled against his
cellulose skin, and as it rained again that night, he was awash with regret. A great pungent pain surged through him like a current, resting on his leaves that were closest to the soil, burned and
soon felt alien, like they were no longer a part of him, a series of dead extremities that, as dawn broke, sloughed off of him like a dead shell.
    OSCAR FOUND NO relief when the sun finally came out; the maid had come up to the plant on the windowsill to splash it with half a
tabo
of water as she did every
morning, and discovered earthy bills pressed among the newly moistened soil. She backed off a couple of steps, saw that a handful of them had made it to the floor, and in her grand astonishment
could only think of screaming, “
Ate! Ate! Ate!
” in varying pitches, and scurrying in small circles as if her shock had confined her in that small a space.
    “What in god’s green graces are you screaming about?” Oscar’s wife rattled back, but the maid was not to be silenced. Emboldened in the face of startling peculiarity, she
tugged and pulled— and were it physically possible, thrashed her Ate about, babbling and pointing—Oscar’s wife soon pieced the signals together, and reacted similarly, albeit with
more screaming.
    AND THAT WAS how the nationwide search for Oscar was abruptly discontinued. The sorrowful wife declared that she had to, unfortunately, give up, and returned home with a heavy
heart. She was careful of all outward appearances, and had the maid swear on her life to secrecy. The money tree was to be their salvation, however withered and ugly it was, and so greedily guarded
that they sought no expertise on its strange manner of shedding money—actual cash, approvable, non-forfeited bills—caring naught about myths and legends and the implications of an
actual money-bearing plant. This money tree was a gift, and that was all it was.
    Oscar shared in this disbelief, a faint idea of it, but he derived no pleasure in this new ability. He found himself constantly and indiscriminately sprayed with pesticide, its irritating
bitterness tainting the smoothness of his daily nourishment. His peaceful tenant, the earthworm, whom Oscar had grown very fond of, was murdered one day with pliers, cast aside with his lesser
leaves, whose only fault were not being as vividly green as the others. The butterflies and moths stopped visiting him, finding their feet and tongues burned by the persistence of chemicals; and
now not even aphids or ants dared come near, whose company Oscar would have readily welcomed. By now it seemed that the only person who shared in his distress was his little daughter, who let out a
whimper as she took the pieces