***
Light cutting across the courtyard
Squeamish
My mother went back inside. I held my hand out to Uncle Roland, who gave it a brief shake. His grip was limp and cold. He never took his eyes off the hog on top of the slaughtering table.
If she found his actions so objectionable, then why did she stand around without saying a word? Or was it that things had suddenly changed?
Swine
My Uncle Roland possessed a cruel streak that frightened me. Of the nine children that made up my mother's family, Roland was second from the youngest. According to my mother, he'd always been in trouble. Always. Just couldn't keep clear of it. A few years ago, long after this incident, he intentionally veered his vehicle out of the westbound lane of Highway 50 and smashed it head-on into an oncoming car. Fortunately, no one died. When asked why he would do such a stupid thing, Uncle Roland simply stated that he wanted to die.
Even when I was still a boy, the way Uncle Roland did things frightened me.
Like the day he slaughtered the hog.
It was early afternoon. We children had clustered on the dusty road outside of the Grandfather's fenced courtyard to watch two men from the wet market haul the celebratory hog to the grandfather's house. The hog was strung up by its feet and carried on a narrow bamboo rod on the shoulders of the two men.
All of us children, me and my cousins and siblings, cleared a path for the two men, allowing them to march through the swung-open iron gate. Then we scurried behind in our bare feet, following the two men cross the concrete courtyard. They went along the moss-covered pathway at the side of the house, and ended up in the Grandfather's huge back yard. Once past the roasting pit that has been lined with banana leaves, the men hefted the hog onto the rusted surface of a steel slaughtering table.
The hog was medium-sized. A male with stiff gray bristles covering its pinkish skin. Feet bound with hairy rope, it lay sidelong on the table. When we crowded close, I could see the hog's bulging eyes darting side-to-side in their wide orbits.
Uncle Roland backed us kids away. He stomped the concrete to scatter the bandy-legged chickens that roamed the yard. He pushed his shirt sleeves up, exposing the scars on his forearms, and slipped the cleaver out from under the slaughtering table. Smiling, Uncle Roland began to pass the blade back and forth over a leather strop.
The hog's eyes tracked the movement of the cleaver like a house gecko tracks a fly. To test the sharpness of the blade, Uncle Roland dragged the tip of his finger over it. A drop of blood bubbled up. He grinned and sliced the air in front of the hog with the cleaver.
The sunlight bouncing off the steel spoked the surrounding air like sparkling night stars and I was momentarily blinded.
I had never witnessed a hog being slaughtered. Although I didn't know if it stemmed from fear or excitement, gooseflesh rose on my arms and on the nape of my neck.
Still grinning, Uncle Roland told us to watch the hog cry.
Slowly, he moved the cleaver so that the broad side of the blade traveled close to the hog's eyes. When it spotted its own horrified reflection swelling on the steel surface of the blade, the hog, who hadn't yet been touched, began to scream painfully loud, the noise it made reminded me of the trumpeting of elephants.
Screamed. The hog had screamed. Not squealed. Not grunted. But screamed like my little sister screamed whenever she was inside a hospital and a smiling doctor or nurse approached carrying a needle.
Laughing now, Uncle Roland prodded the hog with the tip of the cleaver to make it squeal louder. Sweat formed on my temples, then dripped down the side of my face. The Cousins laughed, but I was too busy trying to slow the quickening thumps in my chest to laugh with them.
Uncle Roland told us all to back away, back away. Give him room to slit the hog's throat. He swung the cleaver, slicing the air in front of him to demonstrate.
Uncle Roland stepped toward the hog with his raised, tightly gripped cleaver.
I turned my head away just as the hog screamed again. This time, though, the scream was nothing like the scream my sister made when she caught sight of the doctor coming. It was more like the horrified screams that escapeed my sister's throat the moment the needle was plunged into the flesh of her arm.
When the warm spray from the hog's throat splattered me, I headed for the house, fast. Racing across the yard, I covered my ears with my palms, desperately trying, but unable to drown out the hog's childlike screams.
The screams. After I was safely inside the Grandfather's house, the terrified screams slowly faded, but not completely. In fact, more horrifying than the screams were the gurgling noises that followed.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Buttonquail
You're asking me to dance? Me?
I nodded.
Why?
***
Roland had come in through the front door with a burlap sack swinging from his belt. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, removed the sack, held it up and shouted for Pretchy-Anne to come down and clean the quail. Her door opened. The wooden steps creaked as she made her way down. And then she was standing there, rubbing the sleep off her eyes.
At the kitchen sink, Roland loosened the drawstrings on the sack and dumped the dazed quail into a shallow basin. I counted seven. Five still alive, shivering in the porcelain, making no sound, only blinking their black marble eyes. The other two birds lay dead, two heaps of bloodied feathers, perhaps from a blow meant to stun, maybe from the fear of being in the dark with the others, knowing death was inevitable. Or it might have been that their deaths had been brought about by the merciful grace of something else.
***
The table in the yard was set with
a thick rattan stick
discrete
squeamish
The slow sweeping cone of his light
***
Buttonquail
They held my cousin Elineta's wedding reception at the Grandfather's house.
The moment we arrived, I parted from my parents and siblings and sought out Uncle Roland's sister-in-law, Pretchy-Anne. Whenever visiting the Grandfather's house, I would spend most of my day with her. She was my age, twelve, and before tonight she had never judged me, or made me feel different. But that evening I couldn't find her.
Guests, many of whom I didn't know, crowded the large yard. Although there were lots of Filipinos -- friends of the family -- there were also a few Americans, friends of the groom, standing around the long wooden table in the center of the yard, neatly dressed in barong tagalog's.
The table was full. Laid out on banana leaves were two slaughtered hogs, countless chickens, and dishes overflowing with local foods. There was a three-tiered caked surrounded by glass bowls filled with sliced, chilled fruit.
Sampaguita flowers hung in garlands throughout the yard. I breathed in their warm, jasmine-like scent and watched a man on a wooden platform sing a romantic mariachi ballad. Behind him, three men with broad straw hats covering their heads strummed along on guitars.
Everyone seemed to be laughing. Having fun. Dancing.
Maybe if Pretchy-Anne was here, instead of watching the moon skip over the polished flagstones, I'd be dancing alongside it.
Each time I wondered where Pretchy-Anne was, I worried. Everyone I asked replied by shrugging and saying she should be here.
Once again I scanned the crowd. This time I met the gaze of the American serviceman who Elineta had married. We exchanged a long stare, after which the American smiled, brightly, then winked. Like he and I had something in common. Like we shared some fantastic secret. I flashed my most hateful scowl and whirled away.
When I ran across Eric, Pretchy-Anne's older brother, a flood of relief came over me. I asked him, "Where's your sister?"
"She'll be here later," Eric said. He blew out a mouthful of smoke and stomped his cigarette out on the ground. Although Eric was only thirteen, nobody seemed to mind that he smoked.
"But why hasn't she already come?" I asked.
"She got woke up late last night. To prepare quail."
"Quail?" I had never heard of quail. "What's that?"
Eric laughed. "Birds, of course. We hunted last night."
"Who?"
"Me and Roland."
Eric and I drifted away from the crowd. He lit another cigarette. We sat at a wooden bench along the fence, under an awning of mango laden branches.
It was dark enough now that the lights in the yard cast trembling glows. The star-shaped lanterns made of colored cellophane flashed brightly over the faces of the guests.
Still curious about quail, I asked Eric, "I don't understand. What do you do? Do you flush the birds from bushes?"
Eric shook his head and laughed again. Then he explained how he and Uncle Roland sometimes hunted quail in the surrounding countryside late at night.
While Eric swept the ground with a flashlight, Uncle Roland, armed with a narrow bamboo switch, lurked near the cone of moving light. The instant the light found a startled quail, Uncle Roland brought his weapon whooshing down on top of the bird's head. Then he quickly stooped, wrapped his fingers around the stunned bird and stuffed it into a drawstring pouch that hung from the waist of his pants.
Eric tossed his glowing cigarette butt onto the grass and then wiggled his fingers to describe the way the live quail fluttered while trapped inside the bag against Uncle Roland's thigh.
Last night they caught seven quail. It was very late when they finally got home. Roland had mounted the wooden stairs and woke Pretchy-Anne. He told her to come down to the kitchen to kill, pluck, and clean the birds, so they could freeze the birds for later eating.
"She cried the whole time she stood at the sink," Eric said, contorting his face to mock her expression. "She hates cleaning quail. She complains about being forced to do things she doesn't want to do, just because it's what the family, or anyone else, expects."
Eric stood. He patted his shirt pocket for another cigarette. "I gotta go," he said, lighting the cigarette. I watched him cross the yard, the red glow from the tip of his cigarette moving from hand to mouth in the faint light.
Sitting alone, hearing the music, smelling the food, I thought of Pretchy-Anne. Not long ago she'd told me that when she grew up she wanted, like Elineta, to marry an American. She wanted so badly to leave this dreadful country. I sometimes made-believe that I was that American whom Pretchy would marry. But was I even an American? I was white, true. Anyone could see that. But both my parents were Filipino. What did that make me? I had no idea if I could honestly claim as my country this place or that. Or, for that matter, anyplace at all.
The thought of Pretchy cleaning the birds came back to me. As I concentrated on the image of the frightened quail, I heard someone behind me say, "Oh, there you are."
It was Pretchy-Anne.
I got up off the bench, smiling, and led her across the yard to the table where the food still steamed and threw off odors that made your stomach growl in delight. As I loaded food onto a paper plate for Pretchy-Anne, I couldn't help but notice how gorgeous a girl she was. Her long creame-colored gown covered her feet. Her hair, for once, was not tied back with a rubber band, or scrunchie, or claw clip. In the warm and fragrant evening breeze the ends of her hair rose and dropped, rose and dropped.
With our plates held in front of us, we crossed the courtyard and sat back down on the same wooden bench beneath the same slightly trembling mango leaves where she'd found me. It was dark now, completely, and under the stars the music still played and couples still danced.
For a while Pretchy-Anne and I sat without speaking. Picking at our food with our fingers. Finally, to have something to talk about, I brought up the quail she'd been forced to clean.
Raising her face to grimace, Pretchy-Anne said killing things -- anything -- disgusted her. She went on to say that she probably wouldn't have minded cleaning the birds if they had already been dead. Like fish from the market, or frogs gigged in the muddy paddies and immediately gutted. But with the quail she actually had to use her bare hands to grab the birds around the neck and twist until the quail dangled limp and dead. Along with their frightened squawks and their pleading eyes the killing of the quail, Pretchy-Anne said, broke her heart.
As light from the flashing cellophane lanterns struck her face, I couldn't help but notice Pretchy-Anne looked strangely different tonight. Makeup. She wore makeup. I'd never seen her in makeup before. The red lipstick and the stuff she thickened her lashes with made her look older than twelve, made her look like a woman, which in a way, I guess, she was.
I couldn't help but wonder if the little girl with the coltish legs and scabbed knees was still inside this woman? Did the little girl disappear somewhere? Where was the child who screamed with delight each time the pink bubble blooming from between her lips exploded.
When the musicians in straw hats started another ballad, I set my plate down on the bench beside me and asked Pretchy-Anne if she wanted to dance. Without answering, she looked away to the lanterns dangling from tree branches not far from us. She rotated her paper plate in her hands. Then she turned to face me, smiled falsely, and said, "Maybe later, okay?"
Not five minutes had passed when another boy, a Filipino boy who might have been a couple years older than us, strolled up to where we were seated. He came down on his haunches and placed a hand over Pretchy-Anne's. She blushed, bit her lower lip and shook her head. But he persisted. Finally, she handed me her paper plate to hold. Before getting up she clapped her hands together, rubbing them free of crumbs. Then she let the boy lead her onto the grass, where they danced close against one another.
I sat watching Pretchy-Anne dancing on the flagstones. Her eyes were closed, the right side of her face was buried in the boy's chest. I glanced away, skyward to the stars, and couldn't help but wonder if maybe Pretchy-Anne rejected my request to dance because I was different.
Had she just been being kind to me all this time?
Then I closed my eyes and tried again to picture the quail. Tiny, barely alive. Feather-wrapped creatures that laid scattered on the kitchen counter, near the sink. The birds I imagined stared up pleading to Pretchy-Anne with their glassy eyes.
In my mind, tears swelled in Pretchy-Anne's s eyes as she wrapped her fingers around the quails necks and, one by one, put the birds out of their misery.
When I looked back to where she was dancing, I caught Pretchy-Anne staring at me. Her eyes in the moonlight appeared misted. Quickly, she turned her head.
Suddenly, I was clear about what she meant when she told me she wished the quail were dead before having to clean them.
I nodded.
Why?
***
Roland had come in through the front door with a burlap sack swinging from his belt. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, removed the sack, held it up and shouted for Pretchy-Anne to come down and clean the quail. Her door opened. The wooden steps creaked as she made her way down. And then she was standing there, rubbing the sleep off her eyes.
At the kitchen sink, Roland loosened the drawstrings on the sack and dumped the dazed quail into a shallow basin. I counted seven. Five still alive, shivering in the porcelain, making no sound, only blinking their black marble eyes. The other two birds lay dead, two heaps of bloodied feathers, perhaps from a blow meant to stun, maybe from the fear of being in the dark with the others, knowing death was inevitable. Or it might have been that their deaths had been brought about by the merciful grace of something else.
***
The table in the yard was set with
a thick rattan stick
discrete
squeamish
The slow sweeping cone of his light
***
Buttonquail
They held my cousin Elineta's wedding reception at the Grandfather's house.
The moment we arrived, I parted from my parents and siblings and sought out Uncle Roland's sister-in-law, Pretchy-Anne. Whenever visiting the Grandfather's house, I would spend most of my day with her. She was my age, twelve, and before tonight she had never judged me, or made me feel different. But that evening I couldn't find her.
Guests, many of whom I didn't know, crowded the large yard. Although there were lots of Filipinos -- friends of the family -- there were also a few Americans, friends of the groom, standing around the long wooden table in the center of the yard, neatly dressed in barong tagalog's.
The table was full. Laid out on banana leaves were two slaughtered hogs, countless chickens, and dishes overflowing with local foods. There was a three-tiered caked surrounded by glass bowls filled with sliced, chilled fruit.
Sampaguita flowers hung in garlands throughout the yard. I breathed in their warm, jasmine-like scent and watched a man on a wooden platform sing a romantic mariachi ballad. Behind him, three men with broad straw hats covering their heads strummed along on guitars.
Everyone seemed to be laughing. Having fun. Dancing.
Maybe if Pretchy-Anne was here, instead of watching the moon skip over the polished flagstones, I'd be dancing alongside it.
Each time I wondered where Pretchy-Anne was, I worried. Everyone I asked replied by shrugging and saying she should be here.
Once again I scanned the crowd. This time I met the gaze of the American serviceman who Elineta had married. We exchanged a long stare, after which the American smiled, brightly, then winked. Like he and I had something in common. Like we shared some fantastic secret. I flashed my most hateful scowl and whirled away.
When I ran across Eric, Pretchy-Anne's older brother, a flood of relief came over me. I asked him, "Where's your sister?"
"She'll be here later," Eric said. He blew out a mouthful of smoke and stomped his cigarette out on the ground. Although Eric was only thirteen, nobody seemed to mind that he smoked.
"But why hasn't she already come?" I asked.
"She got woke up late last night. To prepare quail."
"Quail?" I had never heard of quail. "What's that?"
Eric laughed. "Birds, of course. We hunted last night."
"Who?"
"Me and Roland."
Eric and I drifted away from the crowd. He lit another cigarette. We sat at a wooden bench along the fence, under an awning of mango laden branches.
It was dark enough now that the lights in the yard cast trembling glows. The star-shaped lanterns made of colored cellophane flashed brightly over the faces of the guests.
Still curious about quail, I asked Eric, "I don't understand. What do you do? Do you flush the birds from bushes?"
Eric shook his head and laughed again. Then he explained how he and Uncle Roland sometimes hunted quail in the surrounding countryside late at night.
While Eric swept the ground with a flashlight, Uncle Roland, armed with a narrow bamboo switch, lurked near the cone of moving light. The instant the light found a startled quail, Uncle Roland brought his weapon whooshing down on top of the bird's head. Then he quickly stooped, wrapped his fingers around the stunned bird and stuffed it into a drawstring pouch that hung from the waist of his pants.
Eric tossed his glowing cigarette butt onto the grass and then wiggled his fingers to describe the way the live quail fluttered while trapped inside the bag against Uncle Roland's thigh.
Last night they caught seven quail. It was very late when they finally got home. Roland had mounted the wooden stairs and woke Pretchy-Anne. He told her to come down to the kitchen to kill, pluck, and clean the birds, so they could freeze the birds for later eating.
"She cried the whole time she stood at the sink," Eric said, contorting his face to mock her expression. "She hates cleaning quail. She complains about being forced to do things she doesn't want to do, just because it's what the family, or anyone else, expects."
Eric stood. He patted his shirt pocket for another cigarette. "I gotta go," he said, lighting the cigarette. I watched him cross the yard, the red glow from the tip of his cigarette moving from hand to mouth in the faint light.
Sitting alone, hearing the music, smelling the food, I thought of Pretchy-Anne. Not long ago she'd told me that when she grew up she wanted, like Elineta, to marry an American. She wanted so badly to leave this dreadful country. I sometimes made-believe that I was that American whom Pretchy would marry. But was I even an American? I was white, true. Anyone could see that. But both my parents were Filipino. What did that make me? I had no idea if I could honestly claim as my country this place or that. Or, for that matter, anyplace at all.
The thought of Pretchy cleaning the birds came back to me. As I concentrated on the image of the frightened quail, I heard someone behind me say, "Oh, there you are."
It was Pretchy-Anne.
I got up off the bench, smiling, and led her across the yard to the table where the food still steamed and threw off odors that made your stomach growl in delight. As I loaded food onto a paper plate for Pretchy-Anne, I couldn't help but notice how gorgeous a girl she was. Her long creame-colored gown covered her feet. Her hair, for once, was not tied back with a rubber band, or scrunchie, or claw clip. In the warm and fragrant evening breeze the ends of her hair rose and dropped, rose and dropped.
With our plates held in front of us, we crossed the courtyard and sat back down on the same wooden bench beneath the same slightly trembling mango leaves where she'd found me. It was dark now, completely, and under the stars the music still played and couples still danced.
For a while Pretchy-Anne and I sat without speaking. Picking at our food with our fingers. Finally, to have something to talk about, I brought up the quail she'd been forced to clean.
Raising her face to grimace, Pretchy-Anne said killing things -- anything -- disgusted her. She went on to say that she probably wouldn't have minded cleaning the birds if they had already been dead. Like fish from the market, or frogs gigged in the muddy paddies and immediately gutted. But with the quail she actually had to use her bare hands to grab the birds around the neck and twist until the quail dangled limp and dead. Along with their frightened squawks and their pleading eyes the killing of the quail, Pretchy-Anne said, broke her heart.
As light from the flashing cellophane lanterns struck her face, I couldn't help but notice Pretchy-Anne looked strangely different tonight. Makeup. She wore makeup. I'd never seen her in makeup before. The red lipstick and the stuff she thickened her lashes with made her look older than twelve, made her look like a woman, which in a way, I guess, she was.
I couldn't help but wonder if the little girl with the coltish legs and scabbed knees was still inside this woman? Did the little girl disappear somewhere? Where was the child who screamed with delight each time the pink bubble blooming from between her lips exploded.
When the musicians in straw hats started another ballad, I set my plate down on the bench beside me and asked Pretchy-Anne if she wanted to dance. Without answering, she looked away to the lanterns dangling from tree branches not far from us. She rotated her paper plate in her hands. Then she turned to face me, smiled falsely, and said, "Maybe later, okay?"
Not five minutes had passed when another boy, a Filipino boy who might have been a couple years older than us, strolled up to where we were seated. He came down on his haunches and placed a hand over Pretchy-Anne's. She blushed, bit her lower lip and shook her head. But he persisted. Finally, she handed me her paper plate to hold. Before getting up she clapped her hands together, rubbing them free of crumbs. Then she let the boy lead her onto the grass, where they danced close against one another.
I sat watching Pretchy-Anne dancing on the flagstones. Her eyes were closed, the right side of her face was buried in the boy's chest. I glanced away, skyward to the stars, and couldn't help but wonder if maybe Pretchy-Anne rejected my request to dance because I was different.
Had she just been being kind to me all this time?
Then I closed my eyes and tried again to picture the quail. Tiny, barely alive. Feather-wrapped creatures that laid scattered on the kitchen counter, near the sink. The birds I imagined stared up pleading to Pretchy-Anne with their glassy eyes.
In my mind, tears swelled in Pretchy-Anne's s eyes as she wrapped her fingers around the quails necks and, one by one, put the birds out of their misery.
When I looked back to where she was dancing, I caught Pretchy-Anne staring at me. Her eyes in the moonlight appeared misted. Quickly, she turned her head.
Suddenly, I was clear about what she meant when she told me she wished the quail were dead before having to clean them.
The Flagellant
Life has no meaning. Joy is out of bounds.
***
The Flagellant
The Thursday before Good Friday we spent at the Grandfather's house. Everything was colored in a festive tint. My mother stood in front of the stove, where warm smells rose with the steam from boiling pots to fill the room. My brothers and sisters ran through the house, grouping quickly with cousins by age. I remained in the kitchen listening to my mother make plans with her sisters for the following morning. We would leave early in order to claim choice spots at the side of the road, where we would have a clear view of the passing procession.
My mother left the kitchen and I followed her outdoors, onto the concrete ground of the Grandfather's large courtyard. When one of my uncles, Roland, noticed my mother, he made a dramatic announcement. He intended to be a penitent, a flagellant, someone seeking atonement by offering his back for lashing during the Good Friday celebration . At its conclusion he would allow himself to be mounted onto one of the large wooden crosses. Perhaps even have his palms and feet staked instead of secured by ropes.
My mother said, "But why would you do such a thing?"
Uncle Roland frowned and pointed at himself as if somehow he represented all that was evil and wrong in the world. "I did a lot of terrible things this past year."
"You didn't kill anyone, did you?"
My uncle leaned back against the cinder-block fence and did not answer. He flipped his smoldering cigarette away, then folded his arms and stared down at the ground his sandaled feet stood on.
Later, my father would ask my mother what made Uncle Roland think he might change all of the sudden?
***
In the morning the roosters that roamed the Grandfather's property invaded my dreams, their chattering roused me. I climbed up off the woven palm mat I'd slept on, rolled it neatly and went to the window. Down below, the Cousins and Uncles and Aunts were already in the courtyard preparing for the day's festivities.
I slipped into a pair of cutoffs and raced down the wooden steps. Outside I saw Uncle Roland sitting shirtless on a flipped-over crate. Behind him stood another of my uncles. The other uncle gripped a razor blade, and waved his free arm, shouting in an agitated tone at the Cousins to give him room to work. The tight circle of Cousins that surrounded the Uncles loosened. Standing on the balls of my bare feet, I tried to get a better view of what's happening. I could not see past the crowd, though. Not clearly, anyway. Not over so many heads. So I shinned up a leafy guava tree next to the fence, and tucked myself into a low crotch of branches. From there, while breathing in the fresh odor of ripe fruit, I could see perfectly everything that was happening.
Uncle Roland was bent forward, grimacing. The uncle behind him slowly passed the razor lengthwise down Roland's back, scoring it lightly. Then, to complete the cross design, the Uncle behind Roland ran the razor across Roland's back. Roland stood, squared his shoulders and turned in place. The fresh wounds seeped lightly, and the pink cross marring his flesh seemed to glow in the early morning light.
Someone, one of the Cousins I believe, handed Roland a twist of rope tipped with eight or nine short bamboo sticks. His whip. Uncle Roland gripped the knotted end of the rope and raised it above his head. He began to flay his back. And I blinked each time the bamboo sticks struck. First CLACKING over his left shoulder, then CLACKING over the right, and back again.
The echoing KA-CLACK, KA-CLACK, KA-CLACK seemingly bent the air. Even the roosters had stopped their strutting and squawking to listen.
Now, when Uncle Roland turned so his back was facing me, I saw the blood from his wounds blossom and drip. Uncle Roland nodded that he was ready. A black canvass mask with eyeholes cut out of it was slipped over the top of his head. Each time he sucked in a breath of air, the fabric around his mouth expanded and contracted. One of the Cousins climbed onto the wooden crate and placed a crown of thorns on the top of Roland's head.
***
In addition to the hundreds of Americans who filled the sidewalks with their cameras, there were also many vendors selling what my mother called 'street food.' Vendors behind makeshift stands, or pushing rickety carts loaded with iced drinks and dozens of varieties of local fruits. Along with the everpresent smell of smoldering charcoal and grilling meat, there were the contradicting smells of sweet bread and garbage; ripe fruit and smoke. All permeating the damp gray air. My mother fished some coins from her pocket and handed them to a nearby vendor, who in turn handed my mother banana leaves, in which brown sticky rice cakes were wrapped inside. She had me pass them around to my brothers and sisters and cousins.
When I bit into my spongy ricecake, I noticed kids everywhere, racing by with kites made of newspaper; buying caged chicks whose feathers had been dyed especially for Easter in bright greens or yellows or reds.
When the flagellants finally emerged from the churchyard. I stood on my tiptoes to better observe them marching proudly, single-file, down the center the dusty road. Their whips flew over their shoulders, the bamboo clacking loudly each time it struck their backs. As the first of the flagellants went by in front of me, I cringed at the sight of their blood-streaked backs.
I tried to pick my uncle out from the penitents. It was my mother who spotted him first. He marched toward the rear, his face hidden by the broad straw hat he wore.
My mother gasped loudly. She kicked her sandals off and ran barefoot into the street. Alongside Uncle Roland, she cooled and cleansed his bleeding back with water she ladled from a bucket she'd brought.
I wondered about what might compel someone to self-inflict themselves this way. Did my Uncle Roland really take a man's life? Seeing his sacrifice, I thought about and weighed my own sins. The lies I've told, the people I disliked, the wishing I was somebody else living somewhere else. Suddenly, everything was whisking by me in an agitated blur. I closed my eyes, clasped my hands together, and mouthed a silent prayer.
At the opposite end of the road, the flagellants march came to an end. Uncle Roland removed his mask and collapsed face down on the ground. Several of the flagellants were bound with rope to huge wooden crosses, and then the crosses were hoisted up in the heat and the dust. Uncle Roland was not one of them.
***
Later that evening, back in the courtyard of the Grandfather's house, while my mother washed Uncle Roland's back with stove-boiled water, she asked him if he feels cleansed and pure.
He did not answer.
When she started applying gauze to the wounds, my uncle's face contorted in pain.
“So?” my mother urged.
Very softly, Uncle Roland replied. "I should have let them stake me to the cross."
***
The Flagellant
The Thursday before Good Friday we spent at the Grandfather's house. Everything was colored in a festive tint. My mother stood in front of the stove, where warm smells rose with the steam from boiling pots to fill the room. My brothers and sisters ran through the house, grouping quickly with cousins by age. I remained in the kitchen listening to my mother make plans with her sisters for the following morning. We would leave early in order to claim choice spots at the side of the road, where we would have a clear view of the passing procession.
My mother left the kitchen and I followed her outdoors, onto the concrete ground of the Grandfather's large courtyard. When one of my uncles, Roland, noticed my mother, he made a dramatic announcement. He intended to be a penitent, a flagellant, someone seeking atonement by offering his back for lashing during the Good Friday celebration . At its conclusion he would allow himself to be mounted onto one of the large wooden crosses. Perhaps even have his palms and feet staked instead of secured by ropes.
My mother said, "But why would you do such a thing?"
Uncle Roland frowned and pointed at himself as if somehow he represented all that was evil and wrong in the world. "I did a lot of terrible things this past year."
"You didn't kill anyone, did you?"
My uncle leaned back against the cinder-block fence and did not answer. He flipped his smoldering cigarette away, then folded his arms and stared down at the ground his sandaled feet stood on.
Later, my father would ask my mother what made Uncle Roland think he might change all of the sudden?
***
In the morning the roosters that roamed the Grandfather's property invaded my dreams, their chattering roused me. I climbed up off the woven palm mat I'd slept on, rolled it neatly and went to the window. Down below, the Cousins and Uncles and Aunts were already in the courtyard preparing for the day's festivities.
I slipped into a pair of cutoffs and raced down the wooden steps. Outside I saw Uncle Roland sitting shirtless on a flipped-over crate. Behind him stood another of my uncles. The other uncle gripped a razor blade, and waved his free arm, shouting in an agitated tone at the Cousins to give him room to work. The tight circle of Cousins that surrounded the Uncles loosened. Standing on the balls of my bare feet, I tried to get a better view of what's happening. I could not see past the crowd, though. Not clearly, anyway. Not over so many heads. So I shinned up a leafy guava tree next to the fence, and tucked myself into a low crotch of branches. From there, while breathing in the fresh odor of ripe fruit, I could see perfectly everything that was happening.
Uncle Roland was bent forward, grimacing. The uncle behind him slowly passed the razor lengthwise down Roland's back, scoring it lightly. Then, to complete the cross design, the Uncle behind Roland ran the razor across Roland's back. Roland stood, squared his shoulders and turned in place. The fresh wounds seeped lightly, and the pink cross marring his flesh seemed to glow in the early morning light.
Someone, one of the Cousins I believe, handed Roland a twist of rope tipped with eight or nine short bamboo sticks. His whip. Uncle Roland gripped the knotted end of the rope and raised it above his head. He began to flay his back. And I blinked each time the bamboo sticks struck. First CLACKING over his left shoulder, then CLACKING over the right, and back again.
The echoing KA-CLACK, KA-CLACK, KA-CLACK seemingly bent the air. Even the roosters had stopped their strutting and squawking to listen.
Now, when Uncle Roland turned so his back was facing me, I saw the blood from his wounds blossom and drip. Uncle Roland nodded that he was ready. A black canvass mask with eyeholes cut out of it was slipped over the top of his head. Each time he sucked in a breath of air, the fabric around his mouth expanded and contracted. One of the Cousins climbed onto the wooden crate and placed a crown of thorns on the top of Roland's head.
***
In addition to the hundreds of Americans who filled the sidewalks with their cameras, there were also many vendors selling what my mother called 'street food.' Vendors behind makeshift stands, or pushing rickety carts loaded with iced drinks and dozens of varieties of local fruits. Along with the everpresent smell of smoldering charcoal and grilling meat, there were the contradicting smells of sweet bread and garbage; ripe fruit and smoke. All permeating the damp gray air. My mother fished some coins from her pocket and handed them to a nearby vendor, who in turn handed my mother banana leaves, in which brown sticky rice cakes were wrapped inside. She had me pass them around to my brothers and sisters and cousins.
When I bit into my spongy ricecake, I noticed kids everywhere, racing by with kites made of newspaper; buying caged chicks whose feathers had been dyed especially for Easter in bright greens or yellows or reds.
When the flagellants finally emerged from the churchyard. I stood on my tiptoes to better observe them marching proudly, single-file, down the center the dusty road. Their whips flew over their shoulders, the bamboo clacking loudly each time it struck their backs. As the first of the flagellants went by in front of me, I cringed at the sight of their blood-streaked backs.
I tried to pick my uncle out from the penitents. It was my mother who spotted him first. He marched toward the rear, his face hidden by the broad straw hat he wore.
My mother gasped loudly. She kicked her sandals off and ran barefoot into the street. Alongside Uncle Roland, she cooled and cleansed his bleeding back with water she ladled from a bucket she'd brought.
I wondered about what might compel someone to self-inflict themselves this way. Did my Uncle Roland really take a man's life? Seeing his sacrifice, I thought about and weighed my own sins. The lies I've told, the people I disliked, the wishing I was somebody else living somewhere else. Suddenly, everything was whisking by me in an agitated blur. I closed my eyes, clasped my hands together, and mouthed a silent prayer.
At the opposite end of the road, the flagellants march came to an end. Uncle Roland removed his mask and collapsed face down on the ground. Several of the flagellants were bound with rope to huge wooden crosses, and then the crosses were hoisted up in the heat and the dust. Uncle Roland was not one of them.
***
Later that evening, back in the courtyard of the Grandfather's house, while my mother washed Uncle Roland's back with stove-boiled water, she asked him if he feels cleansed and pure.
He did not answer.
When she started applying gauze to the wounds, my uncle's face contorted in pain.
“So?” my mother urged.
Very softly, Uncle Roland replied. "I should have let them stake me to the cross."
Kiosk
If he found being here with working women so objectionable, then why didn't he just up and leave? Or was it that things had suddenly changed.
The woman went back inside her room. I held my hand out to Bloom, who gave it a brief shake. His grip was limp and cold. He never took his eyes off the bottle of San Miguel on the table in front of him.
A circular courtyard.
The stars rose over the open ceiling.
***
Kiosk
We were tired of making our way down the street against a flood of drunks headed back to the base. Tired of the women swishing along the sidewalk, soliciting services you couldn't get in America. We were tired of seeing sailors strolling along with a Filipina girl hanginf off each arm. Tired, really, of everything.
Instead of prowling the bustling nightclubs on Magsaysay Drive like we've done all week, Spinks and I ducked into a side street and came across this little hole-in-the-wall. No neon here. No live band, either. Only a jukebox against the back wall, between the cavelike entrances to two bathrooms. Continually spilling out of the jukebox speakers was Cat Stevens 'Father and Son'.
The courtyard is a scattering of crippled bamboo furniture rimming a tiny dance floor that is cooled by the breeze from an oscillating fan.
The crop of women here aren't dressed in terrycloth bikinis, or dancing on a stage in clouds of colored smoke. And the table we sit at isn't crowded with half-a-dozen or more near-naked beauty queens with seductive smiles.
Nope. In this small dive there are just a handful of not-so-pretty women. Looking much older than their early-twenties. As if life had beaten the beauty out of them. No makeup smearing their faces. Unprovocative jeans. Blouses, neatly pressed but faded. These are provincial women. Probably new to the city, fresh to the trade. Most of them can barely utter more than a few words of English.
Spinks has been drinking all day. Too much. The woman slouched on the chair next to him plays with the snap of her little clutch purse. Occasionally, she sips from the glass in front of her. Every now and then she looks across the table at me with an expression that says she'd rather be somewhere else. For every four San Miguels Spinks downs, the woman gets a drink – probably tea-tinted water – for which she is handed a redeemable chip.
On the table in front of Spinks rests empty beer bottles. And those are the ones the ancient mamasan hadn't already taken away. Spinks struggles to his feet. He slurs out, “We should be getting back to the ship.”
I check my watch. It's well past curfew. If we get picked up, no shore leave when we hit Thailand, Korea, Singapore.. "Too late," I reply. “Sit back down and have another beer. Looks like we're here for the night.
From where we sit, I can see the front door, which is held open by a large stone. The hard rain strikes the banana leaves, rattling them. When I was a boy the sky often did like it did tonight; opened up without notice.
Scanning the establishment with his red eyes, Spinks says, "I bet my mom worked in a bar just like this one." He stares across the table at me, waiting. As if he expects me to reveal something similar about my own mother. Then he pulls out his ship-stamped Zippo and lights a cigarette.
The girl beside him says nothing. Her smooth face is stippled by the trembling leaves of the mango tree above us.
We're close, Spinks and I. Especially after we learned about one another. Both of us have Filipina mothers who'd been married to Americans. During the lonely hours when the ship slices through the open ocean, plowing from port to port, we spend a lot of time trying to understand things. Unlike myself, Spinks has never lived in the Philippines. I grew up here. He spent his childhood in the states. After his mother and father split up, his mother remarried another white American. When my mother's marriage was annulled, she married a Filipino American.
On the ship at sea, while plowing across the ocean from port to port, conversation between us hardly ever grounds to a halt.
Not like now.
Spinks sips his beer. The woman beside him raises her empty glass and spins the ice. "No more drink," she says. She leans against him and he shoves her away.
"Probably," Spinks says. "My mom whored in a place just like this."
In Tagalog, the woman I plan on sleeping with tonight tells Spinks' companion that she's lucky her man is drunk. Spinks' woman sighs and stares up at the ceiling. A few minutes later she gets up without saying anything, crosses the tiny courtyard to the toilet behind the screen.
Spinks continues to wait for me to say something. But what can I say that might possibly make him feel better? The fact is, my mother never worked the nightclubs. Her family owned more than a few of them in Angeles City. She wasn't even allowed inside the clubs after six o'clock. In the early afternoons, however, my mother and her sister visited each of the Grandfather's businesses to collect the day's receipts. After banking, they'd stop at a tiny roadside kiosk to have something to eat. In the kiosk no music played, no alcohol was served, no Americans flashed money. One day an American showed up. He struck up small talk with my mother. After that, he started coming to the kiosk every day. Eventually he convinced my mother to sneak out of the house one night. Not long after that, they eloped.
My mother's father disowned her immediately.
But I don't share these events of my mother's life with Spinks. Instead, I simply say, "People do what they have to do."
When his woman returns from the restroom and sits back down, Spinks jabs a finger in the air toward her andy says, "Just like this bitch. My mom was probably just like this stupid bitch."
Then Spinks ask the women at the table, each in turn, why they were whores.
I shrug and sip my beer so I don't have to say anything. After all, he's on the far side of sober. I doubt he'll remember anything when he wakes in the morning.
Then Spinks does something I've never seen him do. He buries his head in the crotch of his folded arms.
The woman he'd been buying drinks for all night looks at me over the empty beer bottles. "Bakit?" she asks, wanting to know why Spinks is crying.
“It's because,” I say, “you remind my friend of his mother.”
***
Possible Edits
I pulled out one of the plastic chairs and sat down opposite him. I turned to look in the same direction that he was looking. At the end of the beach were the jagged rocks, like muffins sliced in half, with waves slapping at them at regular intervals. Neat, graceful little waves -- as if they'd been measured off with a ruler. Beyond that, there wasn't much to look at.
The bamboo wind blocks that hung from the eaves clacked.
What made Spinks think she might change all of a sudden?
"Crazy," Spinks said.
"Everywhere you go it's the same," Spinks said in a flat tone, gazing at his hands. "The same women, the same bars, the same."
We were sitting on a bench in front of the hospital, waiting for the bus. Every once in a while the breeze would rustle the green leaves above us.
We had passed by seven or eight bars when Spinks anxiously looked up at me again.
The wind swelled up and the bamboo wind blocks that hung from the eaves clacked.
She looked confused. The white teeth between her parted lips looked like bones that had atrophied.
She grabbed my wrist to look at the watch. Her slim, smooth fingers were surprisingly strong. "Did it cost a lot?"
"You think God made us for your pleasure," she asked, her face filled with disdain. "You think you can come here, do whatever you like with whomever you like, and we're just supposed to smile and spread our legs? You think maybe because your white it makes you better than us?" She paused to grab Spinks pack of Marlboros' off the table. She shook one out, brought it to her lips and sat waiting for one of us to produce a lighter.
She ran the zipper of her purse back and forth across its track.
We reached the intersection, brightly lit and teeming with traffic.
By that third day we decided that downtown was old hat. We went instead to a place . . .
The windows lit with a neon sign that announced the existence of women.
Depending on where in town you were, you could expect your presence to attract everything from mild curiosity to open hostility.
The windows lit with a neon sign that proclaimed that upon entering the establishment you would find only the youngest women.
A collection of rooms built around the courtyard.
"Can I sit," the girl said, taking the seat beside me.
Untrendy
A little streetcorner place called 'Dugout'
It was the truth, but for whatever reason, Spinks refused to accept it.
It was our third night in Olongapo City and we had just left Magsaysay Drive.
Spinks looked around the table. "I guess nobody but me thinks their mother was a whore." He shook his head. "Right." He had been drinking. A lot. His eyes were very red.
Spinks let out his breath. He picked up his bottle and turned to me. "So your mother . . . she wasn't?" He let out a little laugh, then brought his beer to his lips and gulped down half the bottle.
Weaving drunk across the bar.
A trio of working girls walked past. Spinks tracked them, scowling until they disappeared out the front door.
At times, he can sound like an American , but in fact he is a mixed kid
My thoughts jumped between
I looked at my watch. It was later than I thought.
She put a sweaty San Miguel bottle in front of him
Hunched over the table, I asked myself ***
She sat quietly, hands folded in her lap.
The woman went back inside her room. I held my hand out to Bloom, who gave it a brief shake. His grip was limp and cold. He never took his eyes off the bottle of San Miguel on the table in front of him.
A circular courtyard.
The stars rose over the open ceiling.
***
Kiosk
We were tired of making our way down the street against a flood of drunks headed back to the base. Tired of the women swishing along the sidewalk, soliciting services you couldn't get in America. We were tired of seeing sailors strolling along with a Filipina girl hanginf off each arm. Tired, really, of everything.
Instead of prowling the bustling nightclubs on Magsaysay Drive like we've done all week, Spinks and I ducked into a side street and came across this little hole-in-the-wall. No neon here. No live band, either. Only a jukebox against the back wall, between the cavelike entrances to two bathrooms. Continually spilling out of the jukebox speakers was Cat Stevens 'Father and Son'.
The courtyard is a scattering of crippled bamboo furniture rimming a tiny dance floor that is cooled by the breeze from an oscillating fan.
The crop of women here aren't dressed in terrycloth bikinis, or dancing on a stage in clouds of colored smoke. And the table we sit at isn't crowded with half-a-dozen or more near-naked beauty queens with seductive smiles.
Nope. In this small dive there are just a handful of not-so-pretty women. Looking much older than their early-twenties. As if life had beaten the beauty out of them. No makeup smearing their faces. Unprovocative jeans. Blouses, neatly pressed but faded. These are provincial women. Probably new to the city, fresh to the trade. Most of them can barely utter more than a few words of English.
Spinks has been drinking all day. Too much. The woman slouched on the chair next to him plays with the snap of her little clutch purse. Occasionally, she sips from the glass in front of her. Every now and then she looks across the table at me with an expression that says she'd rather be somewhere else. For every four San Miguels Spinks downs, the woman gets a drink – probably tea-tinted water – for which she is handed a redeemable chip.
On the table in front of Spinks rests empty beer bottles. And those are the ones the ancient mamasan hadn't already taken away. Spinks struggles to his feet. He slurs out, “We should be getting back to the ship.”
I check my watch. It's well past curfew. If we get picked up, no shore leave when we hit Thailand, Korea, Singapore.. "Too late," I reply. “Sit back down and have another beer. Looks like we're here for the night.
From where we sit, I can see the front door, which is held open by a large stone. The hard rain strikes the banana leaves, rattling them. When I was a boy the sky often did like it did tonight; opened up without notice.
Scanning the establishment with his red eyes, Spinks says, "I bet my mom worked in a bar just like this one." He stares across the table at me, waiting. As if he expects me to reveal something similar about my own mother. Then he pulls out his ship-stamped Zippo and lights a cigarette.
The girl beside him says nothing. Her smooth face is stippled by the trembling leaves of the mango tree above us.
We're close, Spinks and I. Especially after we learned about one another. Both of us have Filipina mothers who'd been married to Americans. During the lonely hours when the ship slices through the open ocean, plowing from port to port, we spend a lot of time trying to understand things. Unlike myself, Spinks has never lived in the Philippines. I grew up here. He spent his childhood in the states. After his mother and father split up, his mother remarried another white American. When my mother's marriage was annulled, she married a Filipino American.
On the ship at sea, while plowing across the ocean from port to port, conversation between us hardly ever grounds to a halt.
Not like now.
Spinks sips his beer. The woman beside him raises her empty glass and spins the ice. "No more drink," she says. She leans against him and he shoves her away.
"Probably," Spinks says. "My mom whored in a place just like this."
In Tagalog, the woman I plan on sleeping with tonight tells Spinks' companion that she's lucky her man is drunk. Spinks' woman sighs and stares up at the ceiling. A few minutes later she gets up without saying anything, crosses the tiny courtyard to the toilet behind the screen.
Spinks continues to wait for me to say something. But what can I say that might possibly make him feel better? The fact is, my mother never worked the nightclubs. Her family owned more than a few of them in Angeles City. She wasn't even allowed inside the clubs after six o'clock. In the early afternoons, however, my mother and her sister visited each of the Grandfather's businesses to collect the day's receipts. After banking, they'd stop at a tiny roadside kiosk to have something to eat. In the kiosk no music played, no alcohol was served, no Americans flashed money. One day an American showed up. He struck up small talk with my mother. After that, he started coming to the kiosk every day. Eventually he convinced my mother to sneak out of the house one night. Not long after that, they eloped.
My mother's father disowned her immediately.
But I don't share these events of my mother's life with Spinks. Instead, I simply say, "People do what they have to do."
When his woman returns from the restroom and sits back down, Spinks jabs a finger in the air toward her andy says, "Just like this bitch. My mom was probably just like this stupid bitch."
Then Spinks ask the women at the table, each in turn, why they were whores.
I shrug and sip my beer so I don't have to say anything. After all, he's on the far side of sober. I doubt he'll remember anything when he wakes in the morning.
Then Spinks does something I've never seen him do. He buries his head in the crotch of his folded arms.
The woman he'd been buying drinks for all night looks at me over the empty beer bottles. "Bakit?" she asks, wanting to know why Spinks is crying.
“It's because,” I say, “you remind my friend of his mother.”
***
Possible Edits
I pulled out one of the plastic chairs and sat down opposite him. I turned to look in the same direction that he was looking. At the end of the beach were the jagged rocks, like muffins sliced in half, with waves slapping at them at regular intervals. Neat, graceful little waves -- as if they'd been measured off with a ruler. Beyond that, there wasn't much to look at.
The bamboo wind blocks that hung from the eaves clacked.
What made Spinks think she might change all of a sudden?
"Crazy," Spinks said.
"Everywhere you go it's the same," Spinks said in a flat tone, gazing at his hands. "The same women, the same bars, the same."
We were sitting on a bench in front of the hospital, waiting for the bus. Every once in a while the breeze would rustle the green leaves above us.
We had passed by seven or eight bars when Spinks anxiously looked up at me again.
The wind swelled up and the bamboo wind blocks that hung from the eaves clacked.
She looked confused. The white teeth between her parted lips looked like bones that had atrophied.
She grabbed my wrist to look at the watch. Her slim, smooth fingers were surprisingly strong. "Did it cost a lot?"
"You think God made us for your pleasure," she asked, her face filled with disdain. "You think you can come here, do whatever you like with whomever you like, and we're just supposed to smile and spread our legs? You think maybe because your white it makes you better than us?" She paused to grab Spinks pack of Marlboros' off the table. She shook one out, brought it to her lips and sat waiting for one of us to produce a lighter.
She ran the zipper of her purse back and forth across its track.
We reached the intersection, brightly lit and teeming with traffic.
By that third day we decided that downtown was old hat. We went instead to a place . . .
The windows lit with a neon sign that announced the existence of women.
Depending on where in town you were, you could expect your presence to attract everything from mild curiosity to open hostility.
The windows lit with a neon sign that proclaimed that upon entering the establishment you would find only the youngest women.
A collection of rooms built around the courtyard.
"Can I sit," the girl said, taking the seat beside me.
Untrendy
A little streetcorner place called 'Dugout'
It was the truth, but for whatever reason, Spinks refused to accept it.
It was our third night in Olongapo City and we had just left Magsaysay Drive.
Spinks looked around the table. "I guess nobody but me thinks their mother was a whore." He shook his head. "Right." He had been drinking. A lot. His eyes were very red.
Spinks let out his breath. He picked up his bottle and turned to me. "So your mother . . . she wasn't?" He let out a little laugh, then brought his beer to his lips and gulped down half the bottle.
Weaving drunk across the bar.
A trio of working girls walked past. Spinks tracked them, scowling until they disappeared out the front door.
At times, he can sound like an American , but in fact he is a mixed kid
My thoughts jumped between
I looked at my watch. It was later than I thought.
She put a sweaty San Miguel bottle in front of him
Hunched over the table, I asked myself ***
She sat quietly, hands folded in her lap.
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.
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.
Bandits
***
Bandits
My mother was very young when the war ended.
To her, the months following the end of the war were more horrifying than the war itself. With the Japanese eradicated from the islands, a new terror surfaced. This time the nightmare inflicted upon the citizens of the Philippines did not reign from an invading force bent on expanding its empire. It came from bands of roaming bandits.
Filipino bandits.
Described as bold and cruel, the bandits swept across the countryside on horseback, pillaging, raping, murdering, spreading like floodwater from village to village; home to home.
The night the bandits struck my mother's home, she had been asleep. She was roused by the barking of dogs. While she laid in bed listening to the agitated dogs, she heard something that sounded like distant thunder. The noises became louder. Realizing she was hearing the pounding of horses' hooves against the hard earth, my mother sat up in bed and screamed.
The bedroom door burst open. Her mother, the Grandmother, rushed across the room to the bed. She threw my mother's mosquito net aside, scooped my mother up under the arms, and hurried out of the bedroom down the wooden steps.
In the salas, the Grandfather had already pried the floorboards up. He was directing the other children down a narrow passage into an earthen hollow beneath the house. Still cradled in the Grandmother's arms, my mother felt herself plunge down the hole onto the packed earth floor. The Grandfather slid the floorboards back into place and darkness tumbled over them. He sat guard, huddled directly beneath the removable boards, his bolo held high.
Confined in the lightless pit, my mother wailed. She groped, sought out the Grandmother's face with her hands. To hush my mother's crying, the Grandmother placed a firm hand over my mother's mouth.
The entire family hunched motionless. No one could see anything. The only thing they could hear was each others gasps in the musty darkness deep beneath the house.
When the bandits entered the house their squawks of laughter and muted voices seeped down through the floorboards.
Below ground, rocked by the Grandmother, my mother remained as still and silent as she possibly could. Meanwhile, the bandits ransacked the house.
After what seemed a long time later, the bandits' voices and footsteps moved out of the house and into the yard.
Then just as quickly as the pounding hooves had stormed toward the house, they faded away.
For a long time after the bandits had left, the Grandfather kept his family down in the dark and the dirt and the silence.
Only when the crickets in the surrounding brush resumed their sawing did the Grandfather slide the floorboards away and hoist himself out of the hollow.
Once outside the pit, they surveyed the damage. The contents of the house had been destroyed. Priceless heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation, had been stolen.
Despite losing most all their belongings, the Grandfather crossed himself and led his devastated family in prayer, thanking God they were all alive.
Bandits
My mother was very young when the war ended.
To her, the months following the end of the war were more horrifying than the war itself. With the Japanese eradicated from the islands, a new terror surfaced. This time the nightmare inflicted upon the citizens of the Philippines did not reign from an invading force bent on expanding its empire. It came from bands of roaming bandits.
Filipino bandits.
Described as bold and cruel, the bandits swept across the countryside on horseback, pillaging, raping, murdering, spreading like floodwater from village to village; home to home.
The night the bandits struck my mother's home, she had been asleep. She was roused by the barking of dogs. While she laid in bed listening to the agitated dogs, she heard something that sounded like distant thunder. The noises became louder. Realizing she was hearing the pounding of horses' hooves against the hard earth, my mother sat up in bed and screamed.
The bedroom door burst open. Her mother, the Grandmother, rushed across the room to the bed. She threw my mother's mosquito net aside, scooped my mother up under the arms, and hurried out of the bedroom down the wooden steps.
In the salas, the Grandfather had already pried the floorboards up. He was directing the other children down a narrow passage into an earthen hollow beneath the house. Still cradled in the Grandmother's arms, my mother felt herself plunge down the hole onto the packed earth floor. The Grandfather slid the floorboards back into place and darkness tumbled over them. He sat guard, huddled directly beneath the removable boards, his bolo held high.
Confined in the lightless pit, my mother wailed. She groped, sought out the Grandmother's face with her hands. To hush my mother's crying, the Grandmother placed a firm hand over my mother's mouth.
The entire family hunched motionless. No one could see anything. The only thing they could hear was each others gasps in the musty darkness deep beneath the house.
When the bandits entered the house their squawks of laughter and muted voices seeped down through the floorboards.
Below ground, rocked by the Grandmother, my mother remained as still and silent as she possibly could. Meanwhile, the bandits ransacked the house.
After what seemed a long time later, the bandits' voices and footsteps moved out of the house and into the yard.
Then just as quickly as the pounding hooves had stormed toward the house, they faded away.
For a long time after the bandits had left, the Grandfather kept his family down in the dark and the dirt and the silence.
Only when the crickets in the surrounding brush resumed their sawing did the Grandfather slide the floorboards away and hoist himself out of the hollow.
Once outside the pit, they surveyed the damage. The contents of the house had been destroyed. Priceless heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation, had been stolen.
Despite losing most all their belongings, the Grandfather crossed himself and led his devastated family in prayer, thanking God they were all alive.
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.
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.
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