Ben Umayam

Ring Lake

It used to be black, black, and crusted, a ring they said, but you had to use your imagination to picture it. It was in the cabinet that displayed French little figurines from Limoges and that fancy colored glass set of goblets with matching decanter. Our parents had bought them from Murano, the island near Venice famous for its glass. They looked too pretty to use. They were too pretty. They pretty much stayed in the cabinet, never used.
This black crusted ring, my mom had brought back from Paoay last summer. Paoay is my father’s town in The Philippines. My mom gave the ring to him for his 60th birthday. He was very proud of this crusted thing. She got the ring from my Auntie Tesay, short for Teresita. The townspeople called her Tarzan, pretty much because she was a tough little lady who took control of any situation.
Auntie Tarzan told my twin sister and I the story behind the crusted ring. There is this lake near Paoay, a beautiful lake. When Marcos came to power in the Philippines, he grabbed all the land around it and built a summer palace there, a sort of Marcos Mar-a-Lago. Auntie Tesay, aka Tarzan, told us that it was not always a lake. It used to be a town, the old town of Paoay.
She told us, “The old Paoay was a community full of good, god- fearing people. They were very successful with a talent for weaving and making blankets. Those are what they call Ilocano blankets now. They became very prosperous. So prosperous they became greedy, so greedy they became evil, no longer were they god-fearing. One night, the clouds rolled in, dark as can be, and brought the rain, and brought the thunder, and brought the typhoon wind. The next morning, when the sun broke through the clouds, the town was no longer there. It had sunk and become a lake, a punishment served on the greedy people who had become evil. All were drowned!”
Auntie Tarzan told us that now and then, a fisherman would catch a fish, wearing an earring on its gill or a ring through its nose. You were supposed to throw the bejeweled fish back into the water for that was an ancestor of the greedy, evil Paoayanians.
“Uncle Guniong,” (I know, they have such weird names) “he caught a fish last winter solstice and brought it home. He made escabeche., sweet and sour fish.” She rattled off the recipe. Auntie Tarzan, Tesay, was the supervisor of the Home Economics department for the Normal College that served the northern province. Normal colleges were teachers' colleges. Us twins looked at each other and wondered if that made all other colleges abnormal. "After finishing his dinner, lo and behold he found this encrusted black ring among the bones of the fish." Auntie Tarzan gave it to my ma to give it to my dad for his birthday.
Now me and my twin sister, we were in awe of this story. We had been to the Philippines with my mother when she got the ring. We had seen the lake. We had accompanied my mother on this trip to see her father, our grandpa who was dying of cancer. He didn’t make an impression on us. Auntie Tarzan had made an impression, she was a bigwig at a normal college, not an abnormal one. And who has an Aunt named Tarzan. We firmly believed her story of all these fish wearing rings and things, swimming at the bottom of the lake.
Two of my other sisters, they did not believe anything. “Humpf,” my ma scoffed. “You believe a guy died on a cross and then rose from the dead after three days! Why can’t you believe in fish swimming wearing jewelry at the bottom of a lake?” To my sisters, this crusted ugly thing was just that, an ugly crusted thing.
But they were curious. It got into their heads to clean and polish the thing. Sure enough, it emerged a ring that sparkled and shined. My father, at first furious, let his anger dissipate like a pressure cooker’s gasket once he saw how bright and shiny the ring was. Was it silver? Could it be some sort of white gold? He could not wait to show it off to his next dinner guests along with the Venetian glass and Limoges figures.
That almost did not happen. My sisters, they were very naughty, very American my mom would say. During the summer of ’64 Beatlemania landed at Kennedy Airport in New York City. The sisters were all gaga, running and screaming, room to room when The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan on a Sunday.
The Beatles were coming to town! New York’s top 40 hit station, WNEW was having a promotion and contest. You showed up at The Plaza Hotel, saw the Beatles wave out their window and if you brought an old sweatshirt, you could trade it in for a WNEW one. The new sweatshirt was yellow and had a logo that was to become the famous smiley. Finally, they would also raffle a pair of tickets to the Fab Four at Shea Stadium. We lived in Flushing, a subway stop away from Shea!
Trina, the eldest, had the measles yet they both snuck out to see Paul and George and John at The Plaza. They didn’t care about Ringo. They had no sweatshirts of their own. They stole my old cub scout sweatshirt. I had cried when they did it, that was my favorite shirt but they told me to stop being a crybaby and took it anyway. They went down to Fifth Ave on the subway, one of them with measles, and got a WNEW smiley sweatshirt. But they did not win the two tickets to Shea.
They were crushed. I was a crybaby.? You should have seen them, crying! “John, Paul,” they bawled, “We have to see you! We are gonna die if we don't see you, George!” They were crying and crying at the dining room table next to the cabinet when the sun shone at just the right angle and something gleamed. Trina stopped sobbing. “Let’s take the ring.!”
“What?” The younger sister Bessie dried her eyes.
“Let’s take the ring to that pawnbroker, the one near the pizzeria. They’ll give us money for the ring and we can buy tickets to see THEM!” They both squealed.
They bought tickets to Shea Stadium. To this day, Bessie the younger one swears George looked her in the eye from the stage and waved at her! They were in heaven until my dad discovered the missing item. Then they were in hell! Seemed they were there that whole summer into the next. My father got the ring back from the pawnshop. He eased up a bit. He bought them tickets to the second concert at Shea, in the nosebleed section, way up.
There is famous footage of that second concert. During their performance of “Help”, Bessie still swears George is looking straight at her, all the way up in the nosebleed section, waving at just her.

There was a warning, at the end of Auntie Tarzan’s story. If you did not throw the fish with the jewels back, you could be cursed for a long time. The elder sister, Trina, she got knocked up and had to marry at the age of 18. Her marriage was unhappy, abusive and she became an alcoholic. This was after her firstborn died the day before her graduation from college, a car accident. The second sister, Bessie, she was not the mastermind, she was the follower. Her marriage was very happy, but her husband died at an early age, a heart attack. Her eldest, a son, is estranged from her. He does not visit her, does not even call, during holidays, Christmas, Easter, birthdays.