Kati
(an itch or burning desire)
by Sheilah Madonna Mortel Salvador | From Issue One (Fall 2025)
She didn’t know what day it was anymore. Time stopped making sense after the funeral. Hours bled into weeks, months of melancholy, of mindless and strenuous routines. Her nails were caked with dried blood. The unbearable and infuriating itch around her waist had spread to her back and shoulders, like she was covered in ants and her skin was about to give birth to puss filled sores. The hot pain from the rip between her legs made her whole body clench, and every time she squatted to use the toilet or do laundry, it felt like her insides would fall out.
Ang kati, napakakati.
The still, somber silence of the operating room, the white lights haunted her. The doctor woke her up a few hours later to deliver news she already knew. It was him. His fault that her baby’s gone. His heavy and careless hands must have pierced her little head as he forced through and around her stomach with that knife of his.
She could never forget how he smiled as he leaned in closer. His breath, hot and thick with Listermint and tobacco, felt like soot against her face. The church could only donate towards the burial he informed her, but he went ahead and did the cesarean for free because he was such a kind and generous man.
“Kailangan mo ng magbayad,” he whispered, pulling her by the hair towards his crotch.
She left at dawn, refusing the black coffee and stale pandesal slathered in margarine served for breakfast. She didn’t want to have to pay for that too. She didn't know how she would make it home, but she kept going. Her friend Pito had just dropped off a nurse when he saw her leaning against a lamp post, clutching her stomach, trying not to fall. He jumped off his tricycle and dodged traffic and curses to get to her. The sound of his heart as she leaned on his chest comforted her, made her hungry.
She told him about her baby.
“Tala ang pangalan niya sana,” she whispered, and he started to cry.
Every bump felt like her newly stitched body would come apart, and the smell of gasoline made her even more sick. She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Pito had painted a woman in a red terno, soaring through a brilliant, star filled sky, her long hair spread out like wings. She smiled when she saw the mole on the woman’s left cheek, and touched her own in the same spot. Her father would pretend to rub it off whenever she complained of how ugly it looked, then pat her cheek gently after, telling her that it was God’s signature because she was his work of art, just like her mother in heaven.
Luis, when he first started courting her, would also pretend to rub it off—just so he could touch her.
“Ay, nunal pala yan,” he would tease, his fingers gently tracing her face, “marka ng diyos sa mga magagandang babaeng tulad mo.”
Then, he would lean in so close she could almost feel his lips, just for him to turn around and leave, smiling as he waved goodbye, promising to come back the next evening with even more mangoes because her father loved them too.
Pito stopped at the store first to buy her Maria biscuit, for her nausea, and a few bottles of Cosmos soda and mangoes. He wanted to get her more- more fruits, rice, milk, some goto so she would have something to eat for supper- but she refused, insisting that Luis would take care of her when he got home from work.
When they finally arrived, she could see the leaves rustling as birds played on the highest branches of the Acacia tree that protected her little house of bamboo and yero, from storms and heatwaves, up where she often wished she could climb and play and hide with them.
She didn’t want to ask him in, she was too embarrassed. She had nothing but water to offer, if there was even any left from what she had gathered from the poso two days ago to drink and cook with. Maybe they could share a Cosmos like they used to.
“Bakit hindi ako ang pinili mo Aurora?” he asked as she opened the door. She turned around but he was already on his tricycle kicking the clutch.
“Agapito,” she called out, waving, but he just rode away.
Pito was always smiling, quick to laugh, his long curly hair always so messy and wild looking. His voice was so soft and gentle, and he was very kind, always working or helping somebody out. Even the mean stray dogs and the drunk who lived in his kariton behind the church liked him.
They went to the JS prom together and they danced all night. He was only a few inches taller than her and their bodies fit perfectly together. She could never forget how his hips swayed and pressed against hers, his skin, dark like coffee with a little bit of milk, smelled of sandalwood soap and fire. He was her first kiss, and she just wanted to keep kissing him, to bite him all over. She wanted to consume him, so she chose Luis.
Luis never slept beside her again after that night, when he found her curled up on their mat, sobbing quietly with the red blanket she made for their baby, holding it like it was her. The scent of mangoes, of the coconut oil she rubbed all over her body filled their house, and he just wanted to get away.
But he had changed, kept his distance long before that night. He had gotten rough. He bit her more than he kissed her, and would thrust into her like he was angry, like he hated her. But she felt cold no matter how hot it got and she just wanted to be next to him, for him to hold her. She was finally coming apart, her waist was ripping like fabric from the hips and she could hear her bones splitting.
His creamy skin had darkened and dulled from long days of working in the sun, building houses they would never afford. When he finally did come home, he reeked of tuba and Fortune cigarettes. He deserved those small luxuries of course, but they were often left with just enough money for rent, and they would end up eating rice and kangkong, boiled kamote when the rice runs out, for months at a time.
Lately, he'd been smelling more like Santa Ana gin and Alhambras, scents she’d come to recognize washing clothes for wealthy people like Doña Solana, and her husband, Don Javier, who would sneak up on her every time she came to collect their laundry. He once squeezed her breasts so hard, her shirt got drenched with breast milk. She wished she had turned around and vomited on his silk shirt, kicked his bloated stomach, bit off his swollen nose. But they got their laundry done everyday and his wife always paid on time. She knew he would eventually overpower her like he did their cook, Sisa, who had to go back home to the province to give birth. So, she started coming in later, when she knew he’d be asleep, which set her back a few hours, so she got even less sleep, less rest.
The tear between her legs had started to feel just like the way Luis used to make her feel, when he was still excited to explore her body.
Ang sarap, sobrang sarap.
She screamed when she finally came undone. Her whole body throbbed with such strange and pure pleasure, she moaned until she was hoarse. She was finally able to sleep and when she woke up, she took her lower body and flew up to the highest branches of the Acacia tree, with the birds, where the leaves were so thick you would not see the sky if you looked up.
Luis did not even notice she was gone until Solana asked him why she had stopped collecting the laundry. He only came home to change clothes, then go be with Solana until dawn, when he had to leave for work. After that night, when Luis filled every hole in her, on the rain soaked bermuda grass of the garden, behind the bongavillas, Solana banished her husband from her room to the lower quarters of the house by his precious garden. Luis moved in even before Don Javier was buried.
He tired of her quickly. She was clingy and tasted like old wine. But he was set on this new life of constant parties, servants and extravagant gifts, of never working again. It was the life he deserved. His status finally matched his movie star good looks.
Fingers shining with diamonds, smoking Alhambras and drinking cognac from a gold embossed flask, he began slipping out after she had fallen asleep,wandering the streets to tire himself out so he could fall asleep.
One night, someone tried to rob him and put a knife to his neck. He thought he was going to die and soiled his pants. A strong and sudden gust of wind made them fall to the ground, and then, he was all alone, surrounded by nothing but the stench of his own fear, and the lingering scent of mangoes and coconut oil.
Ever since then, he started wandering by where he used to live. Only the old Acacia tree remained where his home used to be. He would always hear humming even though the street was empty and would see nothing but stars and rustling leaves when he looked up. Aurora always sat by the window to wait for him, humming softly while she knitted the red blanket for their baby. Sometimes, if he was in a good mood, if he was not too tired, or if he had not smoked or drank too much, he would sit beside her and rub her feet, touch her belly. They would feel the baby move, like she was dancing or playing with them, and it would scare and make him happy all at once.
“Tala,” he would whisper, crying himself to sleep under the Acacia tree, surrounded by empty bottles of Cosmos and mango pits. At dawn, before the roosters would start to crow, the driver would come to take him back to the big house on the hill, where Solana would be waiting for him.
Days after Don Javier was found in the bougainvillea bush of his garden, disemboweled, nose and hands missing, Pito found a handful of money and jewels in the hidden storage of his tricycle. He didn't know how it got there and who left it. Confused and terrified, he buried it under his house, waiting for somebody to come and claim it, for the police to take him away. But no one ever came. He waited a year before pawning the jewels, then bought a jeepney and another tricycle. A few months after news broke of a doctor found decapitated, with his eyes, heart and penis torn out, he found another thick stack of money, and even more jewels hidden in his tricycle again.
He finally stopped searching for Aurora and started leaving bottles of Cosmos and mangoes under the Acacia tree, where her house used to be, where he often saw Luis sleeping. He tried not to disturb him, to kick or spit at him, and instead adjusted the red knitted blanket that was covering him because he looked cold. He would continue to find money and jewelry so he was able to buy more jeepneys and tricycles, build a bigger house, and finally felt worthy enough to ask Sisa to marry him. He sent for her child in the province and loved him like his own. And though it hurt him deeply to see him go, he would send him to study abroad where he tried to shed the Bisaya in him with a medical degree, an American accent and a hippie redheaded wife who would stay out in the sun to get as dark as him. He built Sisa a store where she made dresses and mended clothes. No one would have guessed how talented this former disgraciada was, now married to an Aeta. Rich ladies, fancy city girls, even movie stars started flocking to her store. They named their first daughter Aurora, and would have four more. Pito would keep bringing mangoes and Cosmos to the Acacia tree until he passed away at seventy.
Luis didn't make it past thirty. He died in his sleep under the Acacia tree, wearing Aurora’s wedding ring, clutching Tala’s red blanket. The night before he was to be embalmed, the mortuary was broken into and his body was never found.
Murders and violent attacks would occur sporadically, but strangely, the townspeople were more grateful than scared. Burglars, violent drunks would be found cowering in ditches and forests, ears or fingers missing, rambling about a bat woman with no lower body. A woman suspected of poisoning stray dogs and the old man who lived behind the church, was found in her home with her throat ripped open, bone marrow sucked dry. A young priest known to be fond of children and nuns, was found naked on the church altar with his tongue chewed off. He survived and lived to be almost a hundred, confined in a mental hospital. He had over a thousand journals in his room, all filled with stories of a winged woman, who would crawl out from under his bed at night, dragging her lower body. She would pull down his pajamas and force her lower half on him, then fly out the window. It would writhe and straddle him until he bled, until the upper half came back at dawn, to suck and lick all blood and semen off, leaving just before the roosters started to crow. After his death, a hole was discovered under his bed that led out into the street.
Stories of the winged, half- bodied woman lived on long after she had disappeared from Earth. She now spends her days soaring the skies with Tala, humming and singing, eating mangoes, playing endlessly with the stray dogs who were finally safe and loved, sharing Cosmos with the old man who still lives behind the church in his flying kariton so he can watch over the children and nuns. She always visits with her father, now finally reunited with her mother, both always barefoot, dressed immaculately in their linen wedding whites, and him in his favourite chocolate brown homburg hat with the Agila feather. Her mother’s wings are even more beautiful, more grand than she remembered, and they were not broken anymore. She’s still looking for Luis, but she often sees Pito, and he will always wave and smile, his hair long, and beautiful as always.
Sheilah Madonna Mortel Salvador was born and raised in the Philippines but currently lives in Tkronto, colonially known as Toronto. She is an adult educator who utilizes and facilitates storytelling through spoken word, creative writing, photography and crocheting as acts of resistance, healing, self love and cultural pride. She is currently working on her first novel Daisies Won't Tell, which interrogates and pays tribute to the Pilipino experiences of survival and triumph against historical and immigration trauma.
In 2019, her poems were shortlisted at the Eden Mills Poetry Contest, and her poetry and writing has been featured in Hamthology, the Ham Sandwich Literature, Minerva Literary Journal, Feel Ways- A Scarborough Anthology, and Retreating to Retreat, a book based on the award winning play, Encounters at the Edge of the Woods, of which she was one of the performers.