Regarding My Birth

Submitted to Anderbo on 10/10/09 -- Rejected on 10/11/09
Note: Sorry to say, we will not be using this submitted work, and do wish you the best of luck with it elsewhere.

Regarding My Birth

When she was just a fifteen-year-old girl growing up in the Philippines, my mother worked behind the counter of one of the Grandfather's kiosks, serving beverages to American servicemen. Of the many young men who sought her attentions, it was a quiet young man from Alabama who won her over. Ignoring The Grandfather's warnings, my mother and her American boyfriend eloped to Manila.

From those family members who supported my mother's decision to elope came word that her father -- The Grandfather -- had publicly disowned her. Supporters of the local church and business communities, both of which The Grandfather was a prominent and active member of, were told that my mother was no longer a part of his family.

"Disowned," he told everyone. "Disowned for bringing shame to the family by marrying an American."

Through those lonely and difficult beginnings, my mother and her new husband set up house in a tiny apartment near Clark Air Force Base, where he worked as a military policeman. On the few occasions she ventured away from the base, my mother avoided passing near one her father's many kiosks, which were scattered throughout town.

Often, though, she wished she could return home. At least to visit. She longed for the company of her family. On Sunday mornings she would throw open the apartment windows and listen for the plangent sound of tumbling church bells. She missed her brothers and sisters, how on Sundays in particular, they all gathered around the dinner table, laughing and sharing stories.

Evenings when he came home from the Air Force Base, her new husband frequently found her in tears. Holding her close, the American told her he knew how painful it was not to be able to visit her family. It was like that with him, too. Thank God, he said, they were not truly alone. They had one another.

Three months after the courthouse wedding, my mother gave her husband the wonderful news. She was pregnant. Of course, he was thrilled. With my mother standing at his side, he telephoned his family in America. They were also thrilled.

Every week packages arrived from America, bursting with goods: maternity clothing, baby items, canned American foods.

According to my mother, the pregnancy had helped her overcome the hurdles of loneliness that marriage to a foreigner had brought.

During her sixth month of pregnancy, though, her husband, with his commitment to the military nearing completion, received an ultimatum -- reenlist in the Air Force or transfer back to the states, where subsequently he would be processed out of the military. Knowing that the conflict in Vietnam was blossoming, my mother and her husband both decided it best that he return to civilian life.

But what she didn't know was that her husband would have to go first, leaving her alone to give birth to their child. Before he left, arrangements for support and future travel were handled, promises made.

At the terminal in Manila the young couple said their goodbyes. My mother could not know that as she stood watching her husband board the airplane, she would never see him again.

In the immediate weeks following his departure, alone now in her apartment, my mother thrived on the arrival of the postman, who almost every day handed her an envelope filled with a letter full of money, promises, words of longing and love.

In her replies, my mother often asked when he would return to the Philippines for her. "Soon," he always wrote. "Very soon."

Soon stretched to one month, then another, until just two weeks before the baby was due, my mother responded to a knock on the door and discovered the postman standing out on the porch, holding a registered letter that required a signature.

After smiling brightly, thanking the postman, she tore the envelope open and slid out an official looking document that bore a raised seal.

In the kitchen she sat and read the document. What in the world, she wondered after reading the perplexing letter, is an annulment?

She hurried next door to show the letter to a neighbor girl who had also married an American. There she found out what an annulment was. With her hands shaking she returned to her apartment and once again read the document that destroyed her life.

Closing her eyes, my mother leaned back against the wall and slid down to the floor. How was something like this allowed to happen? How could a stroke of a pen in a faraway place so simply bring something to an end? More important, how could he, her husband, after all they'd shared, after all he'd promised, after all she'd given him -- so easily discard their marriage like some piece of garbage?

Apparently her father had been right when he warned her before she eloped that once her American husband returned to the States, his loneliness and longing would subside and he would forget her.

Now my heartbroken mother, churning with feelings of having been used and betrayed, was more alone than ever. Newly sixteen, pregnant, penniless, disowned by her father, and abandoned by her husband. There was nothing left for her to do. So she pulled the kitchen drawer open and removed the sharpest knife she owned. She carried it into the bathroom, sat on the toilet seat, and considered the unthinkable.

Something happened, though, at the instant she held the tip of the blade against her throat. Inside her the baby stirred. Realizing she couldn't take the unborn child's life, my mother released her grip on the knife. She collapsed onto the bathroom floor and burst into sobs.

For four days she remained alone in her apartment, lying in bed, not eating, contemplating the hard realities of her future.

She would be a young woman in the Philippines with an American child. Forcing herself to picture the many young women who worked in her father's kiosks, she accepted the fact that in order to support her child, she would most probably end up resorting to the most shameful trade in the world.

But before any of that could happen, she would have to deal with an issue demanding more urgent attention.

Her marriage having been annulled meant that she would no longer be allowed to give birth to her baby at the American military hospital. So, in a state of either pride, or fear, or shame, instead of seeking forgiveness and help from her family, my mother fled to Manila, where, until she bore her child, she would live with a friend she'd attended Holy Angel Academy with.

On the night the pains began my mother's friend rushed from the apartment to search out the midwife. Two hours later, with the contractions coming closer, the friend returned to the apartment and told my mother the midwife could not be located.

She helped my mother dress and together they boarded a jeepney. The driver rushed them to the nearest hospital. Inside, even with the pains doubling my mother over, she was regretfully informed that without money up front to pay for the procedure, the hospital would not admit her.

Unless . . .

In a small cold room in the hospital's basement that smelled of alcohol, on a bed that was very hard, and under lights that were very bright, my mother labored for fourteen hours.

During the entire time, people bustled through the room; came and went, came and went. Every few minutes the curtain surrounding her bed would be pulled aside and a new group of visitors would file in, surround the bed and, observing intently, the strange visitors would scribbl in their little spiral notebooks and whisper among one another.

When the baby was finally delivered the doctor in charge of the procedure snatched him up before my mother could see or touch him. He swept across the room with the newborn.

Exhausted and humiliated, my mother buried her face in her pillow and cried. She could no longer bear to look directly into the leering faces of all the first year students from a nearby medical college who had been invited to observe their first childbirth.

Prologue:
Hours after giving birth, The Grandfather arrived at the hospital. My mother returned home, forgiven. Several months later she returned to work the counter of one of the Grandfather's kiosk. She met a Filipino-American man, whom she married. Despite my distinctly Caucasian features, my stepfather never treated me as other than his own. As for my mother's first husband -- my biological father, -- all the way up until his passing several years ago, even after I'd come to America, he neither contacted me nor acknowledged me.