Manila Days
  • Home
  • About
  • Starts and Ends here
  • American mission

Hole to China

9/30/2012

Comments

 
Picture
It’s hot season. I’m digging a hole to China with a kitchen spoon in our back yard. Laling is making plantsa just inside the ground floor where it's dark and cool. She puts the hot steam iron on a fresh banana leaf to keep the ironing smooth and sweet. The green toasts to brown. That acrid smell, I don't know then, is the aroma of my Malate home. When I return to Manila after years in the States, my first whiff of burnt banana leaves triggers nostalgia for a past thick with love and ambivalence.

Laling’s eyes have special powers. Her black irises glisten in clear white pools. She can see when we tell a lie. Her eyes fix on us and we confess. We perk up when she’s happy and wilt when she’s mad. Only Johanna is impervious to her “hwag!" (don't do it!) or "halaka!" (I'm warning you, watch out!). And Laling's eyes cannot stop a skirmish between Scotty and Jo. But Laling is Johanna’s yaya, so Johanna is forgiven 70x7.

Laling takes a break from plantsa. The concrete step near her offers evidence of chicken tonight: dry blood with feathers. Laling doesn’t notice me. She leans on the threshold with her hands behind her. She’s not smiling, not frowning, just looking faraway.  I think: she is tired of us and my heart hurts.

My blond big brother Scotty comes around the corner, “Whadaya doing?”
“Diging ta China.”
“Bobo, you kannat dig a hole ta China.”
“YES I can.”
“Bobo. No you can’t.” He kicks my pile of dirt a little.
I hit him with the spoon, “STOPET! Bobo ka!! Laling!” She looks at us wearily but doesn’t move.
Scotty sees Laling and changes tone. “You kannat dig a hole ta China. BeCAUSE. China’s beside da Pilpines.”
“So hwat!” I don’t get it.
“So you kannat dig der,” with the authority of a second grader.
“Oh,” in a small voice, “Hway?”
“BeCAUSE China’s beside da Pilpines!”
I look at him warily. I still don’t get it.
“How ‘bout da States. You kan dig to da States!” Excited, because he’s found a way for me not to be bobo, he tries to grab my spoon to help me. I whisk it away just in time.
“Ok!” I say happily. I'll dig to granmother’s house.
In my hole to granmother’s house, I find an old brass piece. 
“What’s dis, daddy?” I hold it out to dad in his downstairs study. 
“Hmmm,” he turns it over. “It’s a shell casing from a bullet, maybe World War II.” 

It goes into a special box that I keep under my bed.

PictureTutubi, by Johanna Poethig
Dragonflies, black ants

Phyllis Monteclaro is my best friend. We call her “Feelees.” She’s soft, round, and calm. I’m boney and too excited. Our unlikely union will follow us all the way through 7th grade. She’s a careful perfectionist; I'm quick and clumsy. Note the difference between our macrame bags in Mrs. Sayo's 6th grade Home Ec class. Her string bag could be merchandise at Rustan's Department Store; my knots are moody. "Well," says mom diplomatically, "yours is original."

Felees, two brothers and sister and parents and a relative or two live in the big rambling house beside us. Their father is an editor for Manila Bulletin newspaper  He's round and friendly like Phyllis, but when he's there, I'm shy. Feelee's mom is spry like her older sister. Her mom is warm and chattery and always gives us better merienda than at our house. They are Baptist and so they don’t attend Ellinwood church.

“Feelees, Feeleeeees, FEELESS, ” I call through our screen to her porch, “can I come ober?” Someone at her house tells Feelees that the kana next door is making a fuss again, so she waves to me from the porch, and I run over: down our steps past House #A, unlatch the big green gate of our compound, relatch, and run to her gate. Someone comes down to let me in. We play patintero on their driveway with her sister, brothers and anyone else. Or they watch Popeye on the b&w TV in the Airconditioned Room. We play hideandseek everywhere.

We begin our friendship at Harris Memorial School Kindergarten. A minibus picks us up. Mom ties my hair so it spurts off the top of my head. Raul and his seatmate snicker. But not Feelees. She climbs up and plops down beside me, then turns her wide calm face to mine and smiles. That’s when I decide that Phyllis is my best best friend.
At the Christmas pageant, Phyllis is Mary the mother of Jesus, and I'm an angel, cardboard wings slightly askew.

But let's turn to our favorite pets, insects. 


We love our Harris Memorial praying mantis in its terrarium.  
"See, Feelees,” I point to its spindly arms, “it's praying.” She nods. A pious insect.
The next week, a plumb yellow and black caterpillar appears in the terrarium.
“Kerry!”  Feelees urgently, “halika dito, bilis, bilis!”
“Titcher, titcher!” yells Ramon. Kindergarteners scamper towards the terrarium.
The praying mantis slices into the soft caterpillar. It squirms in its goo. 

“Kita mo yon!”
“Hoy, Boboy, singiting!” Boboy wiggles past Miriam to get closer to the glass.
“Titcher, titcher,” wails Miriam, “Boboy’s making singiting!”
“Titcher, the praying mantis, kinain niya ang catarpillar!”
We struggle with our first semantic crisis of faith: pray to prey.

But we fight for our place in a world of insects who share our meals, flesh, and homes. Langaw buzz the merienda, umok nestle in our Milo and powdered milk; delicate black lines of langgam bore through birthday cakes. Lamok suck up our blood, leave us with dengue. Our hair is the haven of kuto, and we share our beds with surot. We fear ipis, who prefer dark warm cupboards to our roach hotels. We loathe them without distinction—the little ones, the ones that fly, the speckled tan, the long-whiskered ipis. Our house sweats little piles of filings from anay and bukbok; we find alupihan and its cousin the silverfish under old boxes. Of the salagubang, there are jewel, rhino, stag beetles and marching weevils. Then there is the exotic stick insect, the moving leaf sasuma. Not all insects assault us. Magical alitaptap sparkle around palm fronds like Christmas, the fluttery paru paro bring us spirit messages, kuliglig jazz up muggy nights. And tutubi help me forgive them all.

This Saturday, the Monteclaro clan gathers in our yard. “Lets fly tutubi,” suggests Buster. “Dragonfly,” Feelees translates. We swing back the big green gate of the driveway and head up Wright Street to the field two blocks away.  Iridescent green and blue tutubi dive and rise through the kogon grass. We kick at makahiya, which means “shy,” and that’s how it acts. Its' low growing fronds curl closed when you touch them. Feelees’ brother catches a tutubi and ties a string to the tail. He lets it go.  It pulls away, rising high til the leash pulls it back. It's like a dog with wings or a living kite. The boys are deft. Soon, tutubi kites buzz over the grass, struggling to get free. We giggle. My blue one pulls, swerving in the air.  Suddenly, the string drops. It buzzes off. I pull up the limp string to see the end of its tail. “What will happen to it?” I ask Buster. He’s tying someone else’s tutubi to a string.  “It will die,” he says without looking up. He's kind. “Ito, for you,” he’s got iridescent wings between his fingers. The green tail curls. “Hwag na.” He shrugs and hands it to someone else. I gaze at tutubi freely diving in the grass. Only later do I pray that they don’t get caught.

It's Saturday. The Monteclaros are in the province. Johanna and I are bored.  "Let's go to our clubhouse!"  We have a clubhouse on the second rung of the concrete water tower beside our house. But Scotty's clubhouse is on the third rung, and he tosses a mud ball at us.
OK, we're not interested in the clubhouse anyway.
Johanna sighs, then brightens, “Let’s catch black ants!”
“Yeah!”
We don’t really hate them, but the big black army ants crawl in long columns up trees and through the yard and they’re easy pets: independent, plentiful, and disposable.
Our latest experiment is to see how long the army ants can swim. Johanna gets a metal can and fills it with water at the outside faucet and we set a big rock for the island. It’s easy to find the ants. They crawl up the concrete water tower pilings. We flick them into the water and watch them swim to the edge of the can. We pick them up and set them back on their island.

Boy saunters over to watch from the Monteclaro side of the fence.
“Ssst,” we know he’s there, but we ignore him.
“Ssst!” more insistently. He can’t stand it when we ignore him.
“Ano ba ‘yon?”
“Black ant,” Johanna says noncommittally. Boy already knows, of course, and has a battle plan ready.
“I can win your ant,” he brags in a loud whisper.
He holds out  a matchbox, tapping it open just a little to show that it’s full of wriggling hantik—I forgot to mention these—the evilest red ants. We check his fingers for hantik stings.
A surge of team spirit wells up. “Sige, war!” I cry.

Jo and I lug the tin can over to the fence. We try not to slurp the water. Boy is supposed to be on some errand or a house job, so he can’t come over. He glances over his shoulder to check the house. We won’t tell.

Boy can’t wait to unload his red army onto the rock island, a surprise attack on our black navy seals. The red ants look fierce. I feel a sudden surge of motherly worry about our insects, but it's too late to back down. The three of us squat by the can, watching the Jackson Pollock tangle of shiny red and black. Boy's hantik, jammed in a matchbox for too long, are ferocious. He clucks at his team like they're fighting cocks, to spur them on. After a while, it’s hard to tell which color is winning. It’s a gruesome battle of dismemberment. Body sections writhe without heads, legs.

We sit in silence until the last red ant is taken down.

“YEY!” Johanna and I jump up and dance, more relieved than jubilant. Boy laughs too. He’s an easy loser. After the hantik war, we treat our black ants with more respect. But I don’t want to play that ever again.

Comments

Orange Jesus and the acacia diwata  

9/24/2012

Comments

 
Picture
A stained glass Jesus greets you as in the airy sanctuary of Ellinwood Malate Church. He’s draped in orange and big as five people on top of each other. Light streams though Jesus as he stops on a dirt path near a clump of bamboo. You get the impression that he’s just left the nipa huts in the distance, and at the moment he sees you, he opens his arms wide, and says “Come unto me!”  That’s the caption under his feet.

The Orange Jesus seems impervious to suffering. He isn’t hangdog with a crown of thorns, or butchered on a cross, or holding his bloody heart, or slumped on his mother’s lap. And he’s not even sweaty in all those clothes. He’s pale and unscarred, with a mild “don’t worry” expression. He visits me in my sleep, or when I wake in the middle of the night, or when I pray that I’ll find something I lost before daddy knows I lost it. Orange Jesus appears shimmery and see-through. His voice has the timber of all the voices I know melted together. When he comes, I feel quiet with relief. “Come unto me,” he says. But he never says where we are going. 

I love Orange Jesus with his arms wide open. “I am with you always, even to the end of time,” says Rev. Geconcillo quoting Jesus. Everyone says he is with us everywhere, which you have to wonder about, since there is only one of him and lots of us. And grandmother in the States, is he with her when she’s cooking candied orange peels for us at the same time I’m going down the water slide? Is he only with people? How about the maya birds that scatter around us, and Melting Snow our outside cat, or camias and avocado trees?

Does the Orange Jesus like to play Tarzan vine with us? The acacia rustles gently in response.

“Ssst,” Boy calls. I get up from the carabao grass, brushing off little bugs, and wander over to the crooked wire fence that separates our compound from the rambling old house where the Monteclaros live.

“Halaka,” he hisses once he has my full attention,
“Seguro may diwata sa acacia mo.”
Boy has a buzz cut, a long face with hollow cheeks. We don’t know how old he is because he doesn’t go to school. He says his uncle flew to the States by holding onto the wheels of the plane. His eyes get big in his thin face when he’s telling these things. Sometimes we’re a little afraid of him.

I look at him quizzically. I thought diwata only live in balete trees. The spirits cajole you into visiting them and then don't let you go home. Are they in acacias too? At first I don’t mind, but then I feel them buzzing. It's not the sound of a cloud of saints or angels, who make little tingting sounds. 

Daddy has an office on the ground floor that opens out into the yard.
I open the screen door and stick my head in.
“Daddy,” I say carefully, not to worry him.
“Yes Kerry,” he doesn’t look up.
I edge in. We’re not supposed to bother him in his office unless it’s important.
“Daddy, Boy ses dere's spirits in da acacia.”
There’s a brief silence.
He looks up and the light bounces off his black framed glasses. Now he is a pastor, not just my father. 

“No Kerry, there aren’t spirits in trees.”
It’s a gentle answer, but it’s final.
“OK,” I close his screen door slowly and turn to the big tarzan tree. 
How am I going to avoid them?

It’s a gentle tree, really. Would Orange Jesus pull me out? I gingerly scratch its bark and frondy leaves rustle as though they are purring. Small ants, itchy worms, and grimy bugs nestle in its yellow fuzz flowers. It’s not tidy. But it doesn’t fuss when we climb up to its paunch and swing on the Tarzan vine. I squat on the edge of our cement walk and send the acacia a single thought: “If you love me, don’t let them take me.”

But I wonder. When Orange Jesus says, “Come unto me,” does he also mean the acacia's diwatas? Are diwatas afraid of him because he'd chase them out? Where do the diwata live if they don’t have a treehouse? Doesn’t Orange Jesus also love diwatas? Maybe they’re just in a bad mood because they were here first. Why is there a war between their nations? Why can’t diwata and Orange Jesus like each other and share the tree?

Comments

Oi-koi-men-e boat

9/24/2012

Comments

 
Picture
“Bilis, Kerry, bilis!” Laling drags Johanna by one arm as I run across Wright Street to Ellinwood.
“Yah, yah!” Late again for Daily Vacation Bible School. Laling waves me in the direction of my class. Voices spill out and jostle:
“… joyjoyjoyjoy down in my heart--deep and wide--downinmyheart downinmyheart--der’s a fountain flowing deep and —peacethatpassesunderstanding-- downinmyheart.”
In Chrys der is no Eees or Wes!” I slip into the Quonset hut.

“Children,” says our beloved Miss Payuan, “we will make a Oi-koi-men-e boat. Take a cardboard and draw like this.” We swab thick white stinky paste over our outline. We painstakingly line tiny green mungo beans for the boat hull, and paint the lapping ocean blue. We carefully press purple kidney beans into the cross in the boat. But the rice clouds overwhelm.
“Mabuhay!”
“Danny!”
“BoooombA!”
"Victor!”
Rice rains over our hair, the table, and floor.
“Class, class, class! Kumanta tayo!, “Let all the world…”
Easy to distract, we screech,
“Let aaaall da worl in ebrey corner sing my GOD and KEENG
Da hevnsarenottoohigh, His praises there may fly,
Da earth is nottoolow, his praises there may grow.…”
Let aaaall da worl in ebrey corner sing my GOOOD AAAAAND KEENG!

Miss Payuan fumbles in the flannel board box, and decides to recount how Jesus stood up in the boat and stilled the storm.
But Jesus in the flannel board boat lurches sideways. 
Roger raises his hand.
"Roger?”
“Titcher, let's kanta to Jesus, “sit down sit down you’re rocking da boat.”
Yah! It's TRUE! Orange Jesus is standing in the Oi-koi-men-e boat!  Daddy says never stand when the boat is moving. We take merienda of sugary ensamadas and kool-aid and are dismissed with our Oi-koi-men-e bean mosaics. I am secretly alarmed. What is the cross doing in the boat? Won’t it fall over and sink it? Why did Orange Jesus stand? Does he walk on water because he can’t swim? These things they don’t tell us in DVBS.


Comments

The fruit of the camias tree

9/20/2012

Comments

 
Picture
Genesis 3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

A narrow dark path leads from our missionary compound to Ellinwood Bible School, an aging, blue two-story building full of pretty Filipina deaconesses. The first floor holds classrooms and the cafeteria. On the second floor, the girls sleep in crowded gloomy dorm rooms, their beds draped with mosquito nets. It must have been a grand building once, but now the rusted screens are mended to keep out flies. Feral cats breed under its crawl space. Our community cat Melting Snow bore her kittens there, feasting on rotting garbage, bloody napkins, and the gentle devotion of homesick girls. My 27-year-old mother walks this path after breakfast each day to teach Christian Education curriculum. 

The deaconesses are sincerely pious in a girly way. They gently cup palms to their mouths when they giggle. They tweak our cheeks more tenderly than the matrons at Ellinwood Church. When mom turns 28, then 29, a flock of deaconesses in gray and white uniforms cluster up our concrete stairs to serenade her in sweet harmony:  

“Once again has come your birthday,
Once again the time is here.
What a lovely gift from Jesus,
He has kept you one more year.
Happy time, your birthday,
Happy time is here.
What a lovely gift from Jesus,
He has kept you one more year.” 

I see the deaconess when they sing, or come to visit in our sala, and at graduation, when they will fly away. Then they change from plain sparrow clothes into soft organza ternos capped with stiff butterfly sleeves. Some wear the old fashioned paneulo shawl over their camisa and drape a transparent juci tapis over their saya. These girls come from far away provinces, and maybe, says my mother, they have carefully laid away their mother’s only best dress for this moment, their glory day in Manila before returning home. So, oh, how they flutter and preen at their baccalaureate, swirling delightedly around the humbly decorated hall. This is a vision of the angels that will greet us in heaven and I hide behind my mother’s skirt, stricken shy. 

But no matter how they dance, my anxious affection for Ellinwood Bible School is not directed at them. 


It is wholly fixed on the camias tree that beckons from the end of the path at the edge of the Bible School yard. Clusters of green fingerlings dangle from its twisted branches. Tiny camias sprout off the black trunk like whiskers. Camias taste like the South China Sea—sour, wet, and crisp. Like the green sea, they’re translucent. When a sun shaft hits the wizened branches, the fruit light up like Christmas bulbs. 

If you have the eyes to see, you can tell that the camias is a solitary tree. It’s gnarled and shy, with branches curled close to the trunk. It stands apart from the other trees. You wonder if they gossip about the little camias, rustling their leaves high above the galvanized roof of the Bible School. When my mother passes the camias on her way to teach the deaconesses, it is just an ugly ordinary tree. She doesn’t know it is the source of my anguish and desire.

How many times must they tell us not to take and eat of the fruit? The irritated Bible School janitor circles the trunk with old barbed wire. We really try, we do, but if you have a salt-and-sour tooth, then green mango can satisfy, or the dry flesh of santol, or a handful of little sineguelas. In the end, your mouth whines to crunch on camias till your lips pucker. When we are denied the trunk, my scraggly clan of camias-eaters scale onto the ledge of the elementary school and steal camias higher up. We fill our pockets, sneak down to the kitchen for sea salt crystals and crunch our stolen treats until we’re sick, clutching acid stomachs. We suck our dry sandpaper tongue and can’t eat dinner. 

I tell you, my desire for camias is a getter of wisdom. I knew from an early age the hidden mystery of the Fall. When mom reads the story of Rapunzel, and I hear that while she is still inside her mother's womb, her mother has naglilihi for fruit in the witch’s garden, I know the craving cannot be denied. Her husband must bargain with the witch for the price of their child. 


But think: Eve didn't crave the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She was not naglilihi. She was not even considering merienda.  Before God mentioned it and the cunning serpent psst her,  she didn't even noticed the tree-in-the-middle-of-the-garden. So, why did she desire the fruit? Because of God's negative advertising. Really.  I know how it is to be tested. If you can't have it, it tastes more delicious.  And then you really wonder, how did the serpent and the Garden's angels know the fruit was tasty? When God sent the humans away, the angels guarded the entrance with flaming swords. But you wonder what they did on their day off, when they had Garden to themselves.


Comments

We arrive as the Magsaysay era ends

9/16/2012

Comments

 
Picture
Handsome President Ramon Magsaysay is a friend of the common tao. He’s a “bare feet in the palace” president, writes an American author. He isn’t tisoy like Quezon, or a Japanese collaborator like Roxas, or corrupt like Quirino. He was a poor boy from Lubao, so he isn’t ashamed to visit the barrios. He invites peasants and laborers to tour Malacañang, the presidential residence, and encourages farmers to telegram him with their complaints. He understands the needs of a rural nation. Throughout the country, people see new bridges, roads, irrigation canals and artisan wells. He starts a land reform plan – mostly it means opening up Mindanao to settlers. He crushes the Hukbalahap Communists with the help of the American General Lansdale. Some say he won, well, a "Lanslide" in 1953 with America’s assistance. He is America's man in Malacañang.

Cebu island is the domain of his arch-rival Sergio Osmeña, but his trip there is a great success. The president is eager to return to his bed at Malacañang. Past midnight, his plane lifts off from Cebu’s Lahug airport, skims the sea, and turns north towards Manila over the mountainous spine of the island. The night is clear, calm, even beneficent
.

Picture
American Embassy on Dewey
But the pilot aims low at the summit of Mount Manung-gal. Hrakk! A wing snaps an ibalos tree. With a sickening speed, the plane plunges into the ground,  spewing passengers through the gaping metal. Fuselage explodes a glorious orange and the furious heat melts everything left in the plane, including the president. Marcelino Nuya, who lives on the slope, recalls how the raging fire spits like gunshots as he, his son and his dog scramble up the mountain towards the wreckage.

By mid morning on Sunday, March 17 1957, the entire country is filled with anxiety and dread. After a day of fruitless air search, the lone survivor—a journalist badly burned and in shock—is brought by hammock to a hospital in Cebu. Nuya had carried him down the steep slope on his shoulders, then in a hammock to the Balamban River, up and down ravines and slopes for 18 hours. The media praise the heroism of Nuya and his dog Serging. Since the dog was named for the dead president’s rival, its name is changed to Avance!. Both man and dog are honored for their heroism, the man in Cebu and the dog at Malacañang.


My parents learn the news in Tokyo en route to Manila. We arrive the next day at the Manila International Airport. Dick is 31, Eunice is 27, Scott is 3, I’m almost 2, and Johanna is 5 months old. I insist on my sweet blue wool coat, but at the first blast of thick hot air I whip it off. 


We clear customs and are greeted by fellow fraternal workers: the Palms, Fern Grant, the Crawfords. The men help with luggage as mom holds Johanna in one arm and my hand in the other. “Move quickly!” says Ernie Frei the Swiss missionary with the car, "Vice President Garcia arrives from Australia in a few minutes.” He takes us past the waiting motorcade of state vehicles, and then rice fields. “Scotty, look,” says dad, pointing to a farmer steering his carabao.


As the car turns onto Dewey Boulevard that runs along Manila Bay, a hot salt-fish breeze rustles the palm trees. We pass gathering mourners and vendors at the Shrine of our Mother of Perpetual Help at Baclaran Church. “You’re looking out on the famed Manila Bay where Admiral Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet.” My parents nod. “See that island out there,” he points with one hand as he steers past jeepneys and buses,  “see it? Corregidor, last stand of American troops during WWII where the Japanese beat the Americans.” Dick and Eunice peer. “See that white building on the left ahead of us? U.S. Embassy?” He winks, “We only get passes on the 4th of July.” Ernie Frei’s not only Swiss; he’s also American. His Swiss citizenship meant the Japanese couldn’t intern him during the war and he played a critical role as a courier for the resistance.


He swings right down Herran Avenue, and deposits our family at a second floor guest apartment across from an all-night auto shop. The next day, my parents register at City Hall, a large bullet-ridden building with a Quonset hut beside it. On the hottest March on record, Eunice writes in her first letter home:


"We got tied up in the traffic which was mixed up due to the arrival of the cars bringing Magsaysay and the others killed in the plane crash on Sunday. Thousands lined the streets. What a time to arrive here! The next few months are very crucial ones, to say the least. We don’t know what the people’s real feelings are about the loss of Magsaysay."


Two million attended the funeral of President Magsaysay. He was the third president of the new Republic. 


Comments

We eat rice 

9/15/2012

Comments

 
Picture
“Co-co-coooo!” city roosters wake up the dark. As the air lightens, Manila’s birds burst into chatterous cacophony.  By 6:00 a.m., it’s bright, not yet hot. The brown ribs of the walis tingting makes a “thWISK thWISK" sound as it sweeps up leaves for burning. It's an acrid smoke. “Pan de SAL, pan de SAL,” Elena runs out for small warm buns from the boy’s basket. “Ta-TA-ta-TA,” jeepneys honk up Herran. 

Across the street at Philippine Christian College high school, there's a growing rumble of cars, vendors and students. At 8:00 a.m., Bayang magiliw blasts over the PCC loudspeakers calling us to school, work, and prayer.


We make our beds, dress, and brush our teeth. “Come to BREAKfast!” calls mom. Scott, Johanna and I scramble to the big wooden table. Mom leads us as we sing,
When morning gilds the skies my heart awakening cries,
May Jesus Christ be praised! At life and work and prayer
To Jesus I repair. May Jesus Christ be praised!

  
Daddy prays, “Eternal Lord....” If we don’t stuff fried or scrambled eggs into our pan de sal, we have eggs and fried rice, and always a slice of sweet red papaya with calamansi, little round fruit more
maásim than limes.

In our blue kitchen, I sit at the middle table getting in the way. Under the porcelain sink, there’s an oilcan full of rice. That’s what we eat, rice. When it’s cooking, which is everyday, it has a bland white smell like laundry soap.
“Do you eat bread?” friends and strangers ask, because Americans only eat bread. 
“No,” I say proudly, “we eat rice.” 

By 6:00 a.m., we start the meal with “Day is dying in the West” or, 
Evening is here the board is spread. 
Thanks be to God who gives us bread.
Praise God for bread, Amen.

Even though we don’t eat bread, we thank God for it. 

My father prays, “Eternal Lord…” The plates are stacked and dad delivers us equal servings. If we eat fast enough, we can have seconds. I eat all the rice. But when Elena cooks bitter ampalaya, I drop-kick the small green stars under the table. 


Homage to The Airconditioned Room 

Picture
By May,  the flame trees’ orange blossoms shimmer like fire on naked branches. By the heat of mid morning, it is too bright so you just squint. Your clothes develop pools of dark wet. Your handkerchief, which you have folded to mop your soppy brow, is streaked with dirt. 

There is only one place in our house that is dry and cool:
The Airconditioned Room. The AirCon is an old cranky King. Daddy shows Scotty how to turn it on.  
“I wanna watch!” Dad turns to me, 
“Don’t ever turn it on.” He says sternly. I nod meekly. 
When I learn how to turn on the AirCon, I turn Off too soon and almost bust it.

How to turn on the air conditioner:
  1. Flick the switch to Fan. Wait ‘til it rumbles and exhales a musty medicine smell. The windows rattle, which is a good sign. Wait a little more.
  2. Then flick the switch to Cold. But don’t turn the arrow to too much Cold or it will turn back to Fan.
  3. Don’t turn it to Off too soon or you will bust the air conditioner, says dad.
The Aircon’s musty rumbling rattles the windows. It purrs like Melting Snow, the cat who visits us on the kitchen stairs. 

It’s not an injustice that our parents get to sleep in The Airconditioned Room. It belongs to everyone. This is because the b&w TV lives in The Airconditioned Room. We paddle through the house with a rangy mob for our one-hour ration of Betty Boop, Felix the Cat, and Popeye. 

The Airconditioned Room also has the best bed for bouncing.

“Don’t jump on the bed.” 
We jump and jump then–Crack! Johanna’s head hits the window sill. “Araayyy!” Blood dribbles through her stringy blond hair onto the sheets. 
“Mommy! Mommy! Mooommy!” 
Grownups swoop down in great alarm and whisk her away. Other than that, it is the safest bed.

When it's time to get ready for our beds, we squat under the low faucet to wash our pukes. When there’s no water, we scoop water with the tabo from big plastic pails in the bathroom. When pipes are dry, we can’t flush the toilet. It stinks with everybody’s bm together. But mom has stenciled dancing Oklahoma figures from her favorite folksong book on all the bathroom cupboards and toilet seats, so even when it’s stinky, the bathroom is ready for fiesta.

We’re dry; it’s night. The butiki, little lizards, climb onto the screens. A hidden gecko burps. “Gecho,” warns Laling, “stick to your skin.”


“Ping, Ping, read Ping!” We cluster around mom. I suck my two fingers while Ping, a lazy yellow duck, is late to the one-eyed boat with his twenty-one cousins on the Yangtze River. Or we hear how Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, the plump cheerful woman in an upside down house gets the sloppy girl to clean her room or the picky boy to eat his peas.

Then mom guides our words to God’s ears. She curls on the cool mahogany floor near our beds. When we are done, we wait  for “Stealaway.” Her voice lifts off in the dark, “Steal away, steal away, steal away, to Jesus, steal away home....”

God is close since “Stealaway” is his most favorite song. Then God goes to bed. Johanna is making slurpy asleep sounds. From Dakota Street you hear  “baluuuut,” “baluuuut,” from the duck egg man. Cats yowl. Sometimes deep into the Malate nights, multo rustle against the screens.

When it’s too hot, we each stealaway to The Airconditioned Room.

Picture
Comments

No trees of this western world

9/15/2012

Comments

 
Picture
No trees of this western world are as fertile or fierce as those of my first home, Manila.  We were chary of the vicious bamboo, with leaves like knives, fine hair splinters, and a habit of hissing on windless nights. We were deceived by the narra, stiff as an aristocrat whose bark bled like menstrual blood. And we were forgiven with fruit: sampaloc, papaya, mangoes, bananas, lanzones and the plump avocado who splattered her soft green bombs throughout  the entire side yard. 

 But the acacia, the acacia, an enormous mouth of a tree, gobbled up the sky.  In dry season, fine filmy strings dripped like saliva from its branches. At the end of each string curled a terrible basil, furry black "itchy worms” that left insatiably itchy welts wherever they touched skin. The strings were a hanging mine field.  We prayed for those moments when light escaped through the canopy and ran down the lines setting the entire lattice alight. Then, we'd wind our way effortlessly through the treachery.

That Saturday began in a usual manner. The trees calmly chatted with their neighbors while gaggles of  birds landed and whooshed through their hair. Just a stone's throw away in the high school yard, Sousa’s marching music blasted the hot morning air, announcing ROTC practice. The high school boys, certain of their beauty in crisp khaki and black shoes, goose-stepped to the captain’s orders. Their secret girlfriends watched from the fence, giggling into their hands as the boys marched past the grand acacia that swallowed a swath of the high school yard.

I was five. My siblings and I were the neighborhood American kids, everywhere noted, then ignored. I wandered past the high school fence on my way to Reyes Sari Sari store for a sipa and plastic balloon, when–it was the next second– something magnificent happens you cannot pray for. You meet the wild angel who annunciates Mary. Huge wings scattered the acacia leaves above us. The girls gasped, “Ang ganda!” They marveled softly in Tagalog: parang Carmen Miranda, from Manila zoo, kaya. She must have escaped and wandered with increasing weariness over Manila's galvanized rooftops. 

Oh, I loved her, swiftly. My smallness matched her height. She was my annunciation, regal and strange, her head and bill streaked yellow, maybe green, blue. Fear not. Wide winged, the mal'ach bird shifted slowly on her acacia limb.  What? Fear not what? I whisper.

By then, others had seen her too. The ROTC boys gathered at the thick acacia trunk and peered up into the leaves. One boy gave a shout, picked up a small stone and whirled it at her. She gave a small screech and flapped, but did not fly. Pain sliced my heart. And I knew immediately, the way creatures smell terror, that panic had crippled her instincts. Inspired, another boy joined him, then another, another, until pandemonium broke up the military practice. They circled the tree, whooped and threw. Wet stones landed near by and blood splattered the shiny green leaves around me. Her blood was a fire engine red.  

I was only five, small and not brave. I knew – don’t make a fuss in public. "Please," I pleaded as the pastor of the big church walked past, "Please tell them to stop!"  He shook his head sadly. 

Dazed, the bird shifted, one foot to the other. Under my breath, I begged, Fly!  Fly, don't stay here, go up to the roof of the church where they can’t reach you! But she smelled her own death. She raised her brilliant bill up towards the crown of the tree and screeched just once. Then she drew up her strength and let go, out over the school yard, wide angel wings over the Quonset roof, toppling down.

*****************************************
I collect bloodied relics of her execution in a cardboard shoe box under my bed.  For months, during siesta, I scoop out the box, slip off the cover and whisper to her stained leaves and stones.  The old rocks sop up my sorrows, but her blood cries out.  One night, four, she presses up through the mattress into my dreams, flapping her wet matted feathers, beak half gasped. I jerk awake, Ay, I can’t save you, Ay!

When we pack up for the ’68 winter of our American discontent, I find the dusty old box  mouldering under my bed, spiders' abandoned nests among the stones and the leaves crumbling at my touch. She is distant, sad. “I won’t forget,” I whisper. In the dark earth at the root of the acacia, her elements join the soft bones of fallen fledglings, turtles, ducklings, and our Siamese, Saksit. Through my life she haunts me until she changes back to the angel. I will tell you that story later.


Comments

Fraternal children

9/15/2012

 
It happens anywhere, more often when I'm younger, but let’s say I’m flying to Chicago for Christmas and chatting with a middle aged man beside me.

“You got a funny accent. Where'd you grow up?”
“Overseas”
“Really?”
Silence.
“Where?”
“Manila.”
“Really. We have a Filipino gal as a caregiver for my mother. Sweet, talkative.”
"Uh huh."
“Your dad military?”
“No.”
“Business?”
“No.”
I sigh. “My parents were fraternal workers, that's how they say it, worked with the church. Dad on church and labor, squatters, ngo stuff now.”
“Oh...a missionary?”

Imagine the fugue– a brown woman stoops to change the diaper of his 89 year old mother, about the time I'm climbing acacias, driver ants crawl through the Poisonwood Bible in the Congo, some dark whorl of a place for white people,  and women always in long dresses, while in Hawaii a white man (my father, presumably) waves a bible above dark heads while he makes cash like a bandit.

I didn't ask to come but we came, and so we grew up in post war Manila, grimy ugly teeming cheerful Manila. We called it the “Pearl of the Orient.”  “When was it a pearl?” I ask Aunti Soli, one of my many SS Wright mothers. “Oh, it was, but before the war, you should have seen it then.” Her gentle husband, my Uncle Hank, was a guerilla fighter against the Japanese. 

Gen. MacArthur said, “I shall return,” when he high-tailed out of Manila. He splashed dramatically back through low tide at the Gulf of Leyte.  But the Battle for Manila was gruesome.  Americans and Japanese slashed and burned it to a wasteland of charred buildings, bomb rubble and corpses decomposing in the tropical heat.

We lived south of the Pasig River in Malate, a formerly gracious American and upper class Spanish mestizo neighborhood devastated by mortar shelling and pitched battles. Malate was still bedraggled when we Poethigs settled in there.  Families encamped in the ruins of the burned out houses and shanties along Wright Street.

When our family stepped onto the tarmac at the Manila International Airport, there were twenty-three American military installations dotting the Philippines.[1] Manila was 7,000 miles across the Pacific ocean. But America was everywhere.
When we left, there were five.

Eunice's first letter home, March 1956

Manila, P.I. March 1956

Dear Mother,

I am sitting here with a fan on my right and a glass (my 40th today) of calamansi juice on my left (a calamansi is like a ping pong size lime). 

We arrived at the airport a little after Garcia (the new president) arrived from Australia. People lined the streets to see him, so we got our chance to see them. Mania is quite a contrast to Tokyo! Life is so much more sophisticated there and so much less so here. Rice paddies adjoin the airport and we saw our first nipa-thatched house on stilts with a farmer plowing (?) with his carabao as we landed.

I don’t know quite how to describe the effect of stepping out of our air-conditioned constellation into the warmth that is Manila.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so blanketed by the weather.  However, there is almost always a breeze to dry out in. 

Sunday in Tokyo—to retrace our steps—was full. We went to Chapel Center for Church at 11. It is an Army installation, choir is Japanese, Chaplain preaches, Americans make up the congregation. It is on a hill that runs above one of Tokyo’s main streets. What an amazing intersection. Standing in front of the Chapel, to the left, is the Diet Building, symbol of the “New Japan.” On the right, across a moat and behind great stone walls is the Imperial Palace, center of the old ceremonious, Shintoistic, cultural Japan.  And across the street is a large band of men camped in tents, surrounded by great red and white banners, white kerchiefs tied around their foreheads—striking workers (some say Communist inspired). And there on the hill are the Occupation forces and Christianity.  While their owners are in worshipping, the big American cars lined up outside are being further polished and dusted with feather dusters by the drivers. I am sure if I were on the other side of the street, instead of on the hill, I would believe everything I was told by the Communists. However, the truth is that I will always be “on the hill” no matter how idealistically I might wish otherwise.It seems perfectly obvious that no missionary is going to crack the tough nut of Japan.  The most we can do is to lay what groundwork we can for the growth of Christianity and let God in His own time bring it to bear fruit, no doubt without any westerner’s direction.

Our dinner was at the Winn’s and afterwards we had been invited by Mary Ballantyne to take a trip to Kamakura.  However it got too late and involved an hour’s train ride with the children who were so tired and meant getting home late, in addition to the fact that I didn’t know what to do about feeding Johanna, so we very respectfully had to give it up.

We did go to Meiji Shrine where the Imperial Family worships.  I was mortified when, right in the courtyard before the shrine, Kerry could wait no longer…

The plane trip was wonderful. So easy with children. It was not crowded and we spread ourselves out over 1/3 of the plane. The kids could run but not too far. Food was brought to them and they were penned in their seats by the trays which fastened on the arms.  Many nice stewardesses. Close to the bathroom and Kerry slept 3 hours in the buggy while Johanna rocked in the little hammock.  I intend to avoid ships from now on until the children are older (maybe forever, I just don’t care for people who are idle for so long.)

When we landed in Manila a “welcoming committee” was there. The Palms (Jim and Louise), Henry Little, Ernest Frei, and Marg and Bob Crawford who have since been a great help to us.

We are living in the apartment used for those “in transition” in Manila. We have a large bedroom and share a sala (that’s the word we PI’ers use) and a kitchen with other people here—who don’t use them at all.

Through Marge Crawford we have Linore who is going to help take care of the children, etc. here or over at the Crawfords’ where they can play in the yard.  Marge and I are sharing on hiring Linore’s mother to do the laundry (at Marge’s). It seems like more help than I know what to do with but we will have to do shopping and some house hunting. Also I think we will find the heat something to contend with for a while. We spend a lot of time taking cold showers (no hot running water in the apartment) and changing clothes. Those cold showers feel good!

 Today we went to City Hall to register as residents. City Hall is a large, shot-up building.  This office was in a huge long Quonset hut building on one side of the courtyard. We got tied up in the traffic which was mixed up due to the arrival of the cars bringing Magsaysay and the others killed in the plane crash on Sunday. Thousands lined the streets. What a time to arrive here! The next few months are very crucial ones, to say the least. We don’t know what the people’s real feelings are about the loss of Magsaysay. The papers write of little else but others don’t say much.

We have enjoyed mangos for the first time, and Chinese snow peas. All the fruits will soon be in season. Acme grocery store is around the corner. It is complete with Dinty Moore’s stew and Corn Flakes written in Spanish. However, Dinty Moore’s looks out of place in Manila. Acme has everything but when you look at the prices, you feel like going on a fast. There just aren’t any bargains. Milk is 90 cents a litre, Corn Flakes 60 cents and soup 30 cents a can.

 I haven’t seen enough of the city yet to say much. We are right next to a furniture store that has gorgeous wrought iron and rattan furniture.

Got your letter. Dick subscribed to Foreign Affairs for you and I don’t know about the other magazines of his. We’ll find out later (He’s a Union seminary commencement tonight). My Good Housekeeping I think I will stop since I did see American magazines at Acme. We’ll write more later.

Love, Eunice

    Kerry (Kathryn) Poethig

    We were "fraternal kids", Americans in the Philippines from Magsaysay to Marcos. I thought our story needed elaboration.

    Picture

    Archives

    January 2017
    November 2014
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    September 2012
    February 2012

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Arrival
    Christmas
    Days Of Rage
    Dreams
    Early Years 1957 60
    Exile
    Food
    Fraternal
    Furlough
    High School
    Lesbian
    Malate
    New York
    School Days 1960 67
    Theology
    Trees

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from Jeff Kubina, digipam, Neville10