Category: - Manila Days

It’s Christmas again (from Manila)

11/30/2014

1963-64: Grandmother in Philippines as Peace Corps
leaves for a world tour by mid-1964

It's Christmas again (from Manila)

And we’ve tried very hard
To get a family photo
For our Christmas card

We’ve tried it for years
But it never works.
Somebody cries,
And somebody smirks

The problem is not
Uniquely ours,
We see it as a world-wide
Clash of powers.

To get a smile
On the whole world’s face
Is a hope as old
As the human race.

So the picture in words
We present to you
Of the joys of life
We all go through

Merry Christmas
And a Good year too

Christmas 1961

2/19/2013

Diosdado Macapagal is elected President

I.    Infancy

See the child?
        It is mine.
With black eyes and black hair and brown skin;
        It is mine.
It nurses there,
        wrapped in a basket of sawali walls, and bamboo floor.
        Banana leaves and palm warp the baby tight
        like suman.

There are many arms to rock my child,
Many arms to rock my child
Many arms to rock my child,
Many arms to rock to sleep.

But who can sleep?

                                  There is a sliding underground;
                                  The bamboo posts are shaken.
                                   My child will awaken,
                                   And the basket home is gone.

I.    Childhood

See the child?
        He is theirs.
In blue and white, an old school bag, and too few books.
        He is theirs.
He studies there,
        Bent in writing, taking notes, and memorizing.
        Goaded by exams, tuition, English syntax,
        graduation.

There are many things to pay for
Many things to pay for
Many things to pay for
Much for money to buy,

But who can pay?

                            There is a subtle obsolescence
                            to which the school does not react,
                            Their child—he knows each fact,
                            but the answer-book is wrong.

II.    Manhood

See the child?
        He is God’s.
With all his sin, and pride, and near-sightedness, and guilt,
        He is God’s.
He rarely prays;
        He does not know what angels say – he does not care –
Would not believe.
        The politicians sing. That is enough. They say it all.

There are many voices crying,
Many voices crying,
Many voices crying,
There are many voices taunting,

        “Is God there?”

                        Hear the slow and rising roll of history?
                        Its force is breaking on the shore.
                        God’s child – he is only man, no more.
                        But he does not know that God is there.

IV.     Life

See the child?
        We all can claim Him.
With the light of glory on Him, with the burden of the cross,
        We all can claim Him!
He is looking,
Looking for the lost ones – the ones who do not know
        there are not home;
        the evil ones, the crying ones, the anxious, fearful lost.

There are many who do not see Him
Many who can not hear Him
Many who can not hear Him,
Many who do not care.

But He has numbered every hair.

                        Through the murmuring, uneasy shifting
                        come the child’s redeeming story –
                        Glory, Glory, Glory, Glory,
                        Glory! is the fate of earth!

Stolen Chevy

2/18/2013

We aren’t allowed to lick popsicles in the blue Chevy that was assigned to us by the Interboard Office. It doesn’t really belong to us. “Keep it neat,” mom warns. But we go to Dairy Queen for Dillies, those glorious swirls of vanilla dunked in chocolate. They drip as soon as you lick. I sneak my melting Dilly and lick it over the rear windscreen sill. Bad idea –oops—the Dilly drops off the stick and lands in a big chocolate blob on the sill. “Kerry made a blob!” cries Scott. I burst into tears.

“Don’t cry Kerry,” mom says to me. “Dick, be reasonable.” Every time he gets into the car, dad grumbles at the blobby brown stain. After a while, we forget.

Then the Chevy is stolen when my parents are visiting friends in Quezon City. Dad is in a Monster Bad Mood. But a few days later the black rotary phone rings. Mom picks it up. “It’s for you, Dick” she hands him the phone quizzically. The first part of our story is a detective drama.

Sunday, dad takes a taxi to Quezon City Detectives Bureau. A few hours later, he drives through the gate in a white Chevy. He gets out and pats the car on the hood, grinning. Our blue car is white! What happened?
“Cokes, my treat, and I’ll tell you.” We swig our special Cokes out of the frosty bottle and wait for the story.

“So... the detective meets me at the office and says that the men who stole the Chevy had it repainted. He asked, was there a distinguishing mark. You know what I said? A chocolate stain!” Dad laughs and looks at me. I beam. Sorrow has turned to dancing.

“Then we took his car to this shady street in San Juan. He leans over to me and says very quiet-like ‘Sir would you walk on the right side of the street? I will walk on the other side.’ And around this corner comes a white Chevy and that detective jumps right into the street! Man, he stops the driver!

It seems at this point like dad is retelling a tale of two cities. “So, he’s standing there with his hands on the hood and he signals to me to check for the chocolate stain. I see the stain, give him the nod, and the detective whips a snub-nosed revolver out of the driver's belt – don’t know how he knew it was there – and orders him out of the car and handcuffs him!” We’re a-gog with admiration.

This is what we learn later on:
The Quezon City policy had located a car theft ring’s “chop shop” in San Juan where stolen vehicles were repainted and motor IDs filed down. There were ready buyers. Clearly, folks in the government’s auto vehicle registration offices turned a blind eye and re-registered the stolen vehicles legally. Our stolen Chevy, now white, had also been given a new set of hub caps. Nice, since the old ones had been stolen.

The car theft web extended to Cavite City were some of the ring lived. Cavite City was also the site of Sangley Point, a U.S. naval base. Other members lived in Pampanga the sugar cane region near Clark Field, the largest U.S. air base in Asia. The police picked up alleged members of the ring in San Juan, Cavite, and Pampanga. The Philippine Interboard Office had decided to pursue the case of car theft, probably on part of the insurance company. Dad was the principle witness.

Now, this story has a part two. Dad’s first visitor is Rev. Fidel Galang.

Dad admires Rev. Galang from Pampanga. “Methodists had a radical history in the Philippines and he was one of them.” Fidel Galang had been chaplain to the Hukbalahap forces resisting the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during WWII. The Huks became bona fide Maoists after the war. Dad says that Rev. Galang slept next to an emissary from Mao’s People’s Army who were fighting Japanese in mainland China.

After some initial small talk the lanky minister asks, “Did you lose something recently, Dick?”
“As a matter of fact, our Chevy was stolen. We got it back. It was remarkable detective action.”
“So, this is the Filipino way Dick. A relative visited me a week ago. I didn’t see him for a long time. He asked if I knew some American missionaries in Manila. Then finally he said one of his inaanak, his godchildren, was involved in the case.
Rev. Galang hesitates, “Well, Dick, I don’t want to become involved, but I promised I would just check the facts.”
My father thinks he can explain the case: “I reported it to the Interboard Office and they told the insurance company, so now we have to see it through.”
Fidel chuckles,“You Americans believe in insurance! Our insurance is pakisama.”
As he takes leave, he smiles, “I think you will receive some other visitors, Dick.”

A few weeks pass before the next visitor arrives. It’s Saturday and my tense mother greets dad as he drives up.
“You’ll never guess who is sitting in the sala.” She doesn’t wait, “the mayor of San Juan. And he has a woman with him.”
My dad greets the couple sitting stiffly on our rattan couch, their untouched glasses of calamansi juice sit in pools of condensation on the coffee table. The mayor is cordial; the mistress seethes. She clasps and unclasps her lacquered fingers.
“Good afternoon, how can I help you?” Dad tries cordial.
Tense pause, she speaks.
“Pastor, your car, you have it now, yes?”
Dad jolts a bit. “Yeeeh. It was stolen, but the police found it. Our Interboard office contacted authorities. They’ve taken the case”
“But sir” she presses, “your car is better di ba? It was given a fresh paint. It has new hubcaps.”
Mother shifts in her chair. The mayor offers a thin smile.
Dad sits forward. “It was painted to change the color, ma’am. It was a theft. The authorities want to bring the criminal case to court.”
The sala is quiet again. The woman’s voice shifts slightly, pleading.
“It’s my brother, Reverend Poethig. He was involved…"
Mom is visibly agitated. Dad says helplessly, without much insight, “I’m sorry for your brother, ma’am. But the case will have to be decided in court.”
What’s wrong with this missionary? The mayor’s mistress leans forward, red fingernails alive on the rattan arm rest, “Your car is better Reverend!”
The mayor does not intercede even as they take their leave. This must have been her idea. It was going to be her car.

Just before the case comes to trial, a pastor from Cavite city comes to my father’s screen door on the first floor of our house. He doesn’t know my father, so they wend politely around the issue for a proper time, talking about his church, politics, family. Finally, the pastor clears his throat.
“Rev. Poethig”
“Please, call me Dick.”
“Well, you know, ….a parishioner passed by my house last week. You know, they did not attend church for a long time and suddenly they came back.” He smiles a little.
“So they asked for me to help. You know, this is our job as pastor. Well, it seems one of their relatives, well, how can I say, this. It seems he is in jail because he was in a chop shop. You know, chop shop?’
Dad nods.
“They told me it was your car that was stolen. They ask me to tell you they are religious people.”
He hesitates, and decides to say what any Filipino would know, ”and would you drop the charges against their relative.”
Now dad knows. He nods again slowly.
After a shared moment of silence, the pastor adds confidentially.
“You see, Rev. Poethig, I am not familiar with this family, so even though I came to talk to you, I am not comfortable doing so.”

Maybe this is the first time my father gets it. Maybe he understood before, but at this remark he makes a quiet calculation: the early bus ride from Cavite, the jeepney here, back to the Cavite bus station, maybe a stop at the market. He wonders at the accumulated tasks of a Cavite pastor in Manila, and how he will make up for the time it has taken to meet this request, and how he will tell the family when he returns there is no good news, and if the family made the request on behalf of another member they did not know. How many networks of request spiral out from the men in the Quezon city jail. My father remembers Fidel’s smile.

We American fraternal workers, we blunder through, we are obstacles in a smooth exchange of utang and return.

Dick leans forward with deeper understanding of Filipino obligation but an American sense of justice. “Pastor, you can blame it on me. But it is out of my hands. The car is not really mine, so I have no authority to drop charges. It belongs to the Philippine Interboard Office and they are allowing the case to forward.” Dad holds out his hands and shrugs slightly, ”It’s out of my hands.”

Maybe when the big American puts out his hands like that, he looks like Pilot when the crowd chooses to release Barnabas, sending Jesus to his crucifixion. But the pastor nods; he understands. It is out of Rev. Poethig’s hands.

Barbie Shipwreck

2/16/2013

Manila Bay is six blocks away, but we only go there to visit Luneta Park, where our hero Jose Rizal was shot. He has beautiful black hair that curls on his forehead. "Can you cut my hair like Jose Rizal?" The beautician laughs. American girl.

We sit on the seawall: Scott-Kerry-Johanna, and dad takes a photo. Dad points to garbage on the rocks below and says there is sewage in the water. He calls it urban blight. Urban blight, he’s always talking urban this and that. But little boys still ride the waves.

It’s hot season, so back in our yard, we clamber up the slide and shimmy wet shiny bodies into the blue plastic pool at the bottom. Our Filipino barkada don’t join us. American kids at the Interboard Guesthouse do. There’s no plastic pool in their front yard.

One blazingly hot season, Aunti Pampi, the manager 1667-C which is the Interboard Guesthouse, decides on a sandbox in the grassless yard between 1667-B and 1667-C. We have two banana trees and a narra, but the avocado tree rules the dark yard. Ripe avocados plop messily on the ground. It smells of rotten fruit and clay. Only maidenhair ferns flourish in the dimness.

We can hardly stand the excitement. Two workmen measure the space, mix the wet cement and shovel it into the wooden molds. We sit on our backdoor steps as they set the concrete. Auntie Pampi inspects the empty wet square. She’s short a little plump and wears her glasses down her nose.
“Hello Scotty, Kerry, and Johanna.”
“Good apternoon Aunti Pampi,” like angels.
“This is for the Guesthouse children,” Aunti Pampi looks at us over her glasses. Aunti Pampi is friendly, but she’s strict. She is the general of the Interboard Guesthouse where all the missionaries and American guests come and go. I don’t think she likes us too much.

“When is the sand coming?” Scotty can’t wait.
“Next week,” she says vaguely.
“When is the sand coming?” Scotty asks mom three days later.
“I don’t know Scotty.”
“Can you ask Aunti Pampi?”
Mom ignores him after the fifth time.

In the fullness of time, it arrives.
The new sandbox looks like a new baby whale, smooth gray with fine clean glorious beach sand.
“Can I play with my trucks in the sandbox, mom?”
“Ask Aunti Pampi's permission.”

We're careful the first year. When we play with Guesthouse kids, we share our toys. But fine sand is expensive. The second season, we deploy ‘play and run’ guerilla sandbox tactics. Eventually the sandbox is absorbed into the territory of 1667-B.

In the second wet season, Johanna and I requisition the sandbox for Barbie Shipwreck. The sandbox is a tangle of twigs and a black mass of decayed leaves from the narra and avocado trees. Our battered dolls sprawl on the mound dirty sand, sticks and rocks that we’ve piled out of the mucky rain water. We strip them down to survivor wear.
“Barbie, I am hangry,” Johanna is always hungry.
“I will dibe to fish,” My Barbie plunges into the muck, her synthetic hair tangles with the soggy flotsam and pulls up a floating avocado seed.
“Here.”

The sky is a murderous bruise, groaning with rain. Then when it can’t stand it anymore, it lets go in a great relief and rain sprays through the trees, a warm, thick velvet. It splatters on the water in the sandbox, a few twigs fall.
We dangle our barbies around, trying to figure out the next part of our drama.
Johanna looks up at the trees.
“Let’s play shipwreck”
“We are playing shipwreck.”
“No, let’s do shipwreck.” Johanna, wet limp braids, bruised knee, climbs into the wet mucky sandbox with her Barbie in her left hand. She pretends to swim in the pool of dark water that rises around her. The sandbox is cramped for two, we squat there, faces pelted with rain.

Johanna, "playing in the rain", 1975

Running naked
save for panties
in the rain,
bare feet on wet concrete
suitcase filled with dress up clothes
for typhoon days when howling
wind and streaming rain
kept windows tightly shut,
school uniforms of blue bleed before me
faces blurred by time and hot
frightened tears
once, a white bird
sat outside out window
everyday, a cockatoo
I think, then it flew away
I never saw it again.
Childhood.
KP 1970

Johanna scales the Ellinwood Bible School fence. Kerry plays in Jose Rizal's nipa replica in miniature.

Gold Rock

2/15/2013

They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold... Psalm 19:10

“Kids come here!” dad’s in the sala, his right hand is casually on the shoulder of a man. The man looks a little different than daddy’s other labor guys. He’s kayumanggi, really dark. That’s not so different. He’s barefoot, so his shoes are on the step before our screen door. It’s a politeness of people from the province. That’s not different. He’s not bashful. He sits straight up, feet crossed. His pants ride up past his ankles. He smiles with his whole face.

“My wife, Eunice.” To mom, “Jose’s a union leader from Bagiuo Gold. He’s a pastor training at the Labor Education Center with Cicero.
Mom looks a little flustered, but she says “Please stay for merienda."
“Thank you, mum. I already ate,”
“Please, join us. We have some special cuchinta.”
“Thank you, mum. It’s OK...”
“I will tell Elena.”
So we take merienda caramel cuchinta with ngog, shredded coconut. And calamansi juice. We call him Pastor Jose.
“Do you have children?” mom asks.
“Yes, mum, I have three, all girls.” He laughs, and looks at me. “Maybe Belen is your age. Are you five?”
“and a half.”
“Next time, I will bring strawberries from Baguio.”
Scott perks up. “Pastor Jose? Uh, do you go up the zigzag road?”

The zigzag road! Five long hot hours to Christmas: Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac... After La Union, our blue chevy chugs up the zigzags, winding til Johanna turns yellow and we stop so she can vomit. The air gets cool. Scrawny pines spring up steep escarpments first a trickle, then they flood down the hills and we are in heaven, Oh Bag-ui-o. Only when we pass the checkpoint we can be excited – Westminster Hill Cottages here we come! Chilly see-your-breath mornings, the sweet gas-smell of the one heater, Noche Buena on the star speckled Christmas Eve, singing Ideo-o-o In-Excelsis-Deo! Even after Christmas presents there are pony rides, bumper cars in Burnham Park, and the taste of American lemonade at Camp John Hay.
We love the zigzag road.

Pastor Jose nods. Dad asks about strikes.
“Can we be excused,” Scotty for both of us.
Pastor Jose turns to us, smiles.
“Wanna see gold?”
“Gold?” We perk up. He holds out two fists. “Which hand?” Scotty pokes both fists.
Dad, “Relax Scott,”
No problem, Rev. Poethig,” Pastor Jose good naturedly squats down and opens his left hand.
“It’s a rock,“ Scott grumbles.
Mom, “Scotty!”
“Kita mo,” Pastor Jose’s strong crooked finger traces a thin yellow vein, “Gold.”
“It’s a dribble.”
“Letmesee, letmesee!” I scramble over my skeptical brother.
The pastor hands me the rock. Up close, bright gold flecks glimmers in the black.
“Where did you get it?”
“Baguio Gold mine.”
“What’s a mine?” Scotty holds out his hand. I give the rock to him.
Dad, “A deep hole in a mountain where men dig for gold. Then after they have a pile of rocks, they cook them to melt the gold.”
How did you get dis rock?” I want to know.
“I chop it out.”
We look at the rock again. He chop it out of the mountain.
“Do you chop a lot of rocks?” asks Scott
“Every day, we go down, all day long in the dark.”
“Your church is down there?”

Pastor Jose laughs. “I am a miner, a union leader, and a pastor. A fisher of miners, a miner of souls. Ha!” He gives a loud guffaw and slaps his knees. Mom smiles and sits forward. Like she suddenly woke up.
Daddy gives mom an “I told you so” look. Pastor Jose pretends not to notice.
Pastor Jose’s voice is now like a preacher, “you can see, the gold? See it is crying? Ah ha, tears of da earth.”
You know, gold,” says Pastor Jose says as a quiet warning, “is tears of da earth.”
“Gold,” he says again, “is tears of da earth, we miners say,” he hesitates,
“When the shafts collapse.”
Mom shoots us a sharp look.
I think rain is tears of the sky, and the sea is salty like tears. I see with eyes to see: the black rock is sparkle-crying.
Pastor Jose mutters to an invisible congregation of miners, and maybe my parents too, “We take out gold for too few pesos. We give our life for gold. Gold of our tears. But God loves us more than gold. He knows we are but dust.”
His voice has a Dahil sa Iyo sadness.
His eyes get soft when he says, “God loves us more than gold.” My heart gets soft too.
A little silence hovers, the soft silence at the end of prayers.
But dad makes a rustle.
"Can we be excused?” asks Scott.
“OK now Scotty, Kerry...Give back the rock.”
Scotty holds tight. “Can I have it?”
“Scotty! Give it back!” Dad bends down to pry the rock from Scotty.
“It’s OK, Rev. Poethig, it’s OK.” Mr. Jose waves his hands, “a pasalubong.”
Scotty got the rock!

“Can I see?” meekly. He turns his back.
Dad, “Show her the rock, Scott,” Scotty opens his hand to show me quickly then shuts it again.
“Can I hold it?” I say in front of dad so he will make Scotty give it to me.
“Later,” he grumbles. There is no later.

But, I whisper to myself, God loves me more than the gold. So even if I hate my brother, God loves me.

Reparation
Another fight with Scott. “Crybaby, you’re a crybaby!” “NO I’m NOT!”
“So why are you crying? Nobody likes a crybaby.”
“BOBO bobo bobo BOBO!”

Mom comes out, “Both of you- GO to your rooms!”
Curl up on bed sobbing, then quiet, just watching the butiki on the screens.
Soft knock, Scott opens the door opens a crack.
“Whadoyouwant?” I turn towards the wall, but hear him come over.
“Here,” I twist my head to the gold rock in his open hand.
My fingers curl around it gingerly, brushing his palm.
Then I put my head down to hide new tears, whisper, “Thank you.” A streak of pain, like gold, for my brother.
The door closes.

Angels unawares

1/14/2013

Hebrews 13:2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for by this some have entertained angels unawares.

For the first ten years we live in the Protestant timezone of Malate on 1667 B Wright Street. Our small two blocks hosts Ellinwood Malate Church the UCCP American gothic cathedral right across from our green gates. Our neighbors are Ellinwood Bible School, and the Interboard Guest House where missionaries stay when they come into Manila. Philippine Christian College up on Taft Avenue, but PCC high school is right at the end of the block and soon the elementary school will abut our yard. Union Theological Seminary has not yet moved to Cavite.

In the first years, Malate streets were named after American Divisions that occupied Manila during Philippine-American war from 1989-1913– Tennessee, Indiana, Nebraska near Remedios circle, Carolina, Kansas, California, Dakota, Vermont streets. The street names were later changed to Filipino military heroes of the Philippine-American war to get back at Divisions who had landed there, I guess.

Wright Street runs like a tributary into Herran, a busy one-way street that unloads its jeepneys into the bustling Taft Avenue three blocks away. Taft is named for the American Governor General. The wide gracious boulevard lined with acacias is like the Pasig river of jeepneys, schools of noisy fish swimming in both directions. You lift your hand for a colorful ‘catch’ that marks its destination in bright metal signs stuck in the windshield: Quiapo, Divisoria, Tulay, Espana, over the Pasig River.

Cadena de amor drape the wire fence that hides our missionary compound from the street, their tiny pink flowers peeking through the green vines. Come through our large green gate down the gravel drive. On the right is a row of three two-story houses painted white with green roofs and big screen windows laced with black iron bars. Filipino who see these monstrosities know that each house could hold two families instead of our modest family of five.

It’s not that no one enters. God sends through the green gates angels unawares; we just have to pick out the angel. Late morning or early afternoon, there is always the scissor knife man on his bicycle. Then Doktora Ilano’s egg jeepney arrives. She also owns the famous Country Bakeshop on Isaac Peral Ave ( we pronounce it Y-sac Pe-ral). The blind man is led by his son through the gates, and many others slip through the gates to ask for help at my father’s office screen door.

My bet is on the scissor-knife man. He’s skinny with a thin friendly face. He bicycles around in the morning to sharpen knives. When the shoeshine man is spiffing dad’s shoes at the bottom of the stairs, they nod. The scissor knife man hoists his bicycle on its breaks on the gravel driveway under our acacia tree. Sometimes Elena lets us carry our knives to him. On the back of his bicycle he whirls the knives over the whet stone, holding the blades like a baby as sparks spit out. He is everywhere. Mom sees him all over town and he always waves.

Mom says that when we transferred to another house in our compound, and the movers had disappeared, the scissor-knife man was there, like the Holy Spirit. ”Excuse me,” she says, embarrassed. He looks up quizzically from his whet stone. “Could you help with some furniture?” He smiles and stores his equipment. They move back and forth until the delinquent movers return.

“No, No, mum” he waves off my mother’s grateful pesos as they stand in our new sala.
“Cud you gib me a Tagalog Bible, mum?”
My American missionary mom, better at discerning spirits, is not quick with accents.
He touches the window sill, “Gud is nut in heben, mum, Gud is hir.”
Mom squints with effort, ”Yes, God is everywhere and with us.”
Alarmed, the scissor-knife man pats the window sill again to make his point, “Gud is nut in da wud, mum.”
“No, no,” says mother, suddenly illuminated, “He is with us and in us.” They smile in concord, but the scissor-knife man’s face shines in a special way.
“I will find you a Tagalog Bible,” my mother promises.

Hole to China

9/30/2012

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.

Tutubi, 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.

Orange Jesus and the acacia diwata

9/24/2012

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?

Oi-koi-men-e boat

9/24/2012

“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.

The fruit of the camias tree

9/20/2012

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.