Mama likes to tell me that, when it rains but the sun still shines, a tikbalang—a fearsome beast, half-man, half-horse; that trickster—is getting married.

She tells me this because she married one.

He’s not all bad, Mama likes to say about father. Nor all that good.

I look away, outside, at a cloudless night sky. The floorboards tremble, groaning under the storm of his hooves. My hands fly to my ears. In the morning, I see he’s taken a chunk out of Mama’s face.

Still, she makes him coffee; he kisses her where her mouth used to be.