Beak

The power was out again.

The keys to the house on base were to be handed over to my father on Saturday morning. We spent that Friday packing boxes.

The early summer sun glinted here and there off the bent spray, leaving prisms in the air.

Beyond the center field fence was the base of a densly-vegetated hill.

misting the grass with a silvery spray. A pair of long-tailed birds cut right above the sprinkler and disappeared from sight.

The wind swelled, sending the water spraying like gentle buckshot into the bare skin of my arms and legs.

The sprinkler ticked as it rotated, misting the grass with a silvery spray.
The breeze ever so slightly bent the spray from the sprinklers. Rainbows arched above them.

I threw the window open and breathed deeply. I could almost taste the ripe guavas that hung from the tree in front of me.

The prisms hovering above the bending water from the sprinklers

I picked the leaves off the passing hedges and broke them apart between my fingers.

felt the coolness of the grass

The whir of insects.

The way the grass and gravel burns into my palms.

Slipping on the wet grass

Stooped to get under the house

I froze with a handful of grass still in my grip.

All of it, I can see, within walking distance.


***

Finally the day arrived. After a year of being back in the Philippines, we were moving out of Angeles City and onto Clark Air Force Base. My mother could stop worrying about me. No longer would I have to stay in view of some uncle or aunt if I wanted to to outdoors to play.

That summer weekend we spent loading boxes of outr belongings into the old Impala wagon. While my father and I transported those same boxes to the new place, my mother and siblings continued to pack. All Saturday and Sunday I hauled our things up the wooden steps into the new house.

The whole experience was new and exciting. This would be the first time ever I hadn't had to share a bedroom. It was the smallest bedroom in the house. But it was mine. When the moving was finished I stood at the window of my own room, and twisted a rod that yawed the storm shutters open like tired eyelids. Outside, on the other side of the leafy guava tree that crowded the front porch, our old tan Impala wagon rested along the culdesac curb in front of the house. Not far in the distance, Lily Hill stood majestic and green, buffering the sky from the surrounding rooftops.

I went out into the yard where a cluster of banana trees leaned toward a storm ditch that bordered the main road. There were kids. American kids, who pedaled past me on Huffy bicycles, shifting the ball gears that stuck up from the sissy bar. Not since the year I spent in Idaho, where my father was stationed in between stays in the Philippines, had I been surrounded by so many kids who were not Filipino.

I knew I would be happy here. Happier even, perhaps, than anywhere else I'd lived.

The new house stood on concrete pillars. Instead of going back inside, I crawled beneath the house and sat watching ants move in a line through the loamy sand. I would make friends here, I thought. Real friends. Friends who were white like me.

My first night I laid in bed with the window open. Because the windows were screened there was no need for a mosquito net. I listened to insects bat the screen. Whenever I opened my eyes that night, I'd see shadows of the leaves of the guava dancing on the bedroom walls.

Monday after breakfast I asked my mother could I go outdoors. My father head already left for work. She hesitated, seemingly unconvinced that I was free from the clutches of strangers who might want to harm me just because I wasn't like them. I pleaded, promising to be back home in an hour. Even offered to watch my brothers and sisters without complaining. Even said I'd haul the garbage out without arguing. Promised to never again to brood about having to visit the Grandfather and the Cousins, whom I disliked without knowing why.

She finally agreed. I wrapped my arms around her, then left the house and followed the storm ditch toward Lily Hill. At the end of the street there was a complex of four or five baseball diamonds. I plucked a fistful of leaves from a perfectly trimmed hedge and breathed in the freshly-cut grass. Occasionally, a navy blue government truck trundled past. There were Filipina maids pushing strollers on the sidewalk. And there were kids. White kids. Groups of them coming and going everywere.

I felt free and anxious. There was so much to see and do. So much.

On the outfield grass of the baseball diamond nearest the street, two boys about my age were running through the sprinklers. I walked over to the wooden bleachers, sat down and watched the spray bend in the warm breeze. Little rainbows appeared and disappeared. When one of the boys saw me sitting in the bleachers behind the backstop, he called me over. Soon, under the spray of the sprinklers I'd become as soaked as they had. I peeled my shirt off and tossed my shoes aside. I learned their names, Billy and Greg. And they learned mine.

Not long after, a Filipino groundskeeper drove up in a government truck. He went along the chain link fence on the right field side of the diamond. When he got to a concrete island sprouted with valves, he started turning a rusted wheel. The water died away.
shut them off.

Greg, the tallest of my two new friends, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Hey, Beak. What you do that for?"

Billy chimed in, "Yeah, Beak. Turn the water back on."

Beak? Like a bird? I'd never heard the word directed toward a person before. I asked my new friends what it meant.

"A Beak," Greg said, "is what we call the Filipinos."

I tried to picture a bird's beak, tried to make a connection. Nothing. "But why Beak?" I asked, perplexed.

Instead of answering my question, Billy said, "My mom says Beaks are dirty and you can't trust them for nothing."

Greg made a weird face by creasing his brow and puting his lips fully. Then he said, "Beaks are like Niggers."

They started laughing. Both of them. They laughed so hard I started to laugh too.

Greg said, "My Dad says the Beaks are like little monkeys you have to keep an eye on to keep them from doing you wrong."

We moved from the outfield to a dry patch of grass near one of the dugouts, under a leaning duhat tree. The hot afternoon sun quickly dried my dripping body. My two new friends filled me in on all the things to do on base. The movies and miniature golf course and bowling alley were just minutes walk a way. There were three swimming pools. In the military barracks, you could listen to music on jukeboxes and order fries and shakes. And of course, there was Lily Hill.

On Lily Hill you could explore the many caves, or simply by turning the earth with your toe, you could find spent bullet heads. Short stubby American ones. Long pointed Japanese ones.

After a while, Billy, he got to saying how he couldn't wait to get back to the World. Greg agreed. According to my new friends, there wasn't anyplace that could compare to the World. Billy's dad was in Vietnam, fighting the Gooks. Greg's dad worked in the base hospital, where he operated on the soldiers who had limbs blown off in Vietnam.

They asked what my dad did.

First I thought about my real dad. My biological dad who was back in the World. I'd never known him, but I often thought about him. My mother described him as tall and handsome and quiet. But up until a few months ago, I hadn't even known how he looked. One evening the Grandmother pulled me aside, and while nobody was looking, she showed me a black-and-white photograph. My biological dad looked sharp in his uniform. He stood with his foot on the front fender of his military patrol car. I almost blurted out that my dad was a policeman.

Then I thought about my other dad. The dad who raised me. He wasn't a beak, was he? True, he was Filipino, but he was American, too. Just not white. Whenever he had to go to Vietnam, it was as an American soldier. Not a beak. I wondered which dad I should bring up to my new friends. And how much information they really needed to know. Having new friends, white like me, felt important that afternoon. More important than anything else.

I said, "My dad is a policeman."

Just then a woman came pushing a stroller alongside the chain link fence. Billy said, "And that's what a Beak maid looks like." Greg pointed a finger to a FIlipino man mowing the adjacent field. He said, "And that's a Beak yardboy."

Both of my new friends laughed again. I laughed so hard I almost peed.

BIlly said when Greg's brother, Delbert, turned fifteen he got brought into town for an evening with a whore.

Like Beak, I had no idea what a whore was. So, of course, comfortable now in the company of my new friends, I asked.

"Don't you know nothing?" Billy said. "A whore is a Filipino woman."

Greg said, "Not all whores are Filipino women. But all Filipino women are whores." He looked at BIlly and grinned. "Ain't that right, Billy?"

I didn't understand, wasn't getting it. The look on my face must have made that clear, because Billy said, "Ain't you never seen the whores off base?"

When I didn't answer, Greg said, "Here comes another Beak maid." He made that crazy face of his again. I looked up, stared past Billy's shoulders and froze.

And there my mother was.

I stopped laughing. I plucked a handful of grass from the ground in front of me and listened to Billy say, "She's pretty . . . for a Beak."

Then my mother shouted my name out. Both of my new friends stared at me. Hard. Billy asked, "You know her?"

I didn't say anything. I just yanked another fistful of grass out of the earth and looked at my mother, who was smiling now, broadly, and waving her hand as if to get my attentions. She called out my name again. I stood and said, "I have to go, guys."

"Oh," Billy said. "She's your family's maid, right?"

Without answering, I bent over, grabbed my tennis shoes and still damp shirt off the ground, then started walking toward my mother.

"Hey," Billy shouted from behind me. I stopped. Holding my breath, I slowly turned my head to look over my shoulder.

Billy was grinning. "If you come tomorrow, we'll show you the caves on Lily Hill."

"Yeah," Greg said. "Bring a flashlight if you have one. And something to eat. About noon."

I nodded. Then I ran off quickly to meet my mother before she got any closer.

"Look at you," my mother scolded when I reached her. "Filthy as a monkey. And get that shirt on before you sunburn again."

"Let's go," I said, slipping the cold shirt over my head as I hurried past her toward my new house. Away from my new friends. "I'm hungry."

She reached for my hand. I pulled it away. "Come on, Mom," I whispered. "Please."

My mother stared at me. She glanced back to my two freinds, who were sitting on the grass, leaning bafck on their palms with theri legs stretched out in front of them. Greg shouted at a passing truck. "Hey, Beak!"

Billy laughed.

That night I laid in bed wondering if my two new friends had known, would they have kept up with the taunts toward the Filipino people. Probably not, I concluded. But I did know. And I did keep up that afternoon, thinking it was all so funny. And for a long time afterward, I lived with that.