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before the encounter. It is the
act
of encountering each other that
brings out what is left of the “nativeness” in them. It is here that
Deleuze’s concept of the body as something that can only be
perceived and understood through its relation with the milieu
really applies.
As a matriarch, Maya serves the community by becoming
the surrogate Virgin Mary for the people. Therefore her role as the
matriarch of the family is complex and conflicting. Maya’s
assuming the guise of the Virgin Mary is a display of the colonial
violence upon her body. When becoming-Virgin Mary, Maya
becomes a spectacle by putting on extravagant embroidered blouse
and velvet skirt over lace petticoats, with her neck “weighted by a
necklace of emeralds as big as hens’ eggs” (Rosca, 1988: 156). The
power she acquires by dressing and performing like Virgin Mary is
therefore a sign of her fall from her ancestors’ indigenous culture.
She is given the chance to become-Filipina only through her
encounter with her daughter-in-law, Mayang.
The illegitimate daughter of Maya’s Chinese-Malay maid,
Mayang is offered by her mother for Maya to take as her
daughter-in-law. On the eve of the wedding, Maya attempts to pass
down her female knowledge and to teach Mayang how to be a
good wife to her son Carlos Lucas. But as she speaks, she realizes it
is not facts or knowledge that can be articulated through language
that she is compelled to pass down. Another force is at work in
her
—
an intensity of feelings that is at the heart of the family’s
history must be confronted and responded to in her proximity to
the body of Mayang.
[T]he girl loomed over her, stooped, and pressed her body
against the length of Maya’s body, her hands on Maya’s
hands, palm to palm, pinning them to the pillow. The
weight, the glint in the girl’s eyes only two inches away
from her own threw her into confusion and, before she
could stop herself, she was back within the monastery
deep in the cellar, where among casks of Benedictine wine
she and her monk had celebrated their alliance . . . . Her