Category: Food

Sundays

5/13/2013

During vacation, from the thick heat of April to May, your Sunday clothes stick to your body with sweat. Your handkerchief, which you fold to mop your brow, is streaked with dirt. In the Elliinwood sanctuary, the small electric fans fastened to the pillars whir ineffectually over our heads. Pews are a-flutter with Sunday bulletins, handkerchiefs and sandlewood fans, all gently flapping. It looks like many species of butterflies mating. Maya birds dive in and out of the high eves chirping through the 10 am service.

Johanna’s a scamp. When she's little, she’s already suspicious of the Sacraments. We're kicking our feet aimlessly into the air, skewered one-two-three between mom and dad on the hard wooden pews. Dad hands mom the Communion bread over us. Johanna's hand shoots out for a little white square of Wonder Bread. Mom catches her wrist. Jo pulls at squirms, “I’m hangry!’
Mom whispers, “Not this bread Johanna, you can have a popsicle after church.”
Then the big silver tray with little glasses of grape juice is passed over us and continues down the pew.
Mom and dad each take one, swig them, and set them in little holes in back of the front pew.
I like those little holes.
Mom leans over with her head in her hands.
This alarms Johanna. "Whattsa matter?”
When mom still doesn’t answer, Johanna tries again, “Whattsa matter mommy, koolaid feel you bad?” A fit of giggles ripples down the pew.
When she’s older, Johanna doesn’t even sit with us. She slips up to the balcony to draw.

But Sunday tops the charts. First, there’s Sunday School, which we love, no lie. If we have to go to church too, then after the choir sings “Amen, Amen, AAaaaaa-men,” we tumble out with a crowd that congeal on the outside of the church to greet each other. The popsicle men position their carts at the gutter beside the sidewalk. “Chocolate!” Our popsicle man lifts up the metal cover and dry ice smoke billows into the muggy Sunday heat. Chocolate is best, then orange, last pineapple. If we wheedle, he might break off a bit of dry ice so we can pretend smoke or play Brigadoon, the ghost island.

Mom and dad invite foreigners visiting Ellinwood, so we never know who is coming to Sunday Dinner. Mom sets out her Irish lace tablecloth. Once a week, we get frozen fruit salad dissolving in 7up, and scoop out the cold fruit with Thai brass spoons that grandmother brought us. Our favorite aromas waft from the kitchen - breaded pork, steak Dianne or crisp fried chicken. Always, always white rice and green beans.

The grand feast of Sunday dinner is followed by the sacred lull of an afternoon of Rest Time, which mostly means mom can take time off until Sunday pizza, which she smothers with thick tomato paste, Vienna sausages, and Velveeta. We eat the pizza to drink Coke, our weekly ration. And the ultimate reward. We don't sing or pray, and we eat in front of the TV in the Airconditioned Room, watching Bonanza where we travel through the burning map to the Ponderosa. We munch, swig, and live Out West with the Cartwrights and Hop Sing. Then dad pats us out of The Airconditioned Room so he can watch The Fugitive, which we figure is x-rated since we never get to see it.

When we are teenagers, mom and Auntie Eva publish the thin red Filipino Family Cookbook with recipes from the SS Wright maternal mafia. By then, we've tested them against American versions, but none can compare to Sunday pizza on 1667 B Wright Street.

Quick pizza dough
1/4 cup warm water                                       1/2 cup cold water
21/2 tsp dry yeast                                          3 cups sifted flour
1 tsp sugar                                                    1 tsp salt
1/4 cup boiling water                                   1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp shortening

Dissolve 1 tsp sugar in 1/4 cup warm water. Sprinkle the yeast in slowly. Stir gently to dissolve. Set aside. Dissolve shortening in 1/4 cup of boiling water. Add cold water and cool to lukewarm. Add yeast mixture. Beat in sifted flour, salt, and 1 tbsp sugar. When blended let stand for 15 minutes. Divide into two parts. Flatten into pancakes and press to form 12” circles. Use pizza pans or cookie sheets. Brush with olive oil and add filling given below. Bake 12-20 minutes at 450 F.

Filling
4 tbsp cooking oil                   chopped onions
green pepper                          2 cups Vienna sausage
garlic 1 can tomato sauce
salt black or green olives
shredded cheese                    anchovy fillets
bay leaf pepper to taste

Vignettes of Christmas, 1965
Eunice Poethig to Juliet Blanchard

It rained the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The rain came as a surprise, for the rainy season is over, but when I closed my eyes the rain became snow. Though snow has no sound, the wind has, and the sound of wet branches creaking, and the feeling of something in the air can be taken for snow if you want it badly enough.

Snow on Christmas Eve is a glorious event. This hard rain would have been a real snow blizzard, making streets slippery, sending the children to the closets for snow suits, turning even ordinary shrubs into Christmas trees.

But rain on Christmas Eve wets the poinsettias blooming high by the fence. After the rain stops, children’s gowns must be carried to the church and the elaborate preparations for the crèche in the chancel viewed. Tonight is the Carol Service.

It’s 7:00pm. The children are gowned and seated in their risers behind the crèche. The lighting is lovely. Lilies Kapili hasn’t arrived yet! The adult choir is straggling in. I can’t get choir gowns for the candlebearers because she has the key to the cabinet.

The Carol Service is not going as well as dress rehearsal. But my “angels!” Scott, Kerry and Johanna are singing their hearts out. They look wonderful. Scott still has a choir-boy look. It’s his last year with it, probably. Kerry looks so pure, and Johanna’s long blond hair shines in the light. Johanna has a solo and she did it very well. The three of them, joined by Loius Panlilio are singing a two-part song. Margaret is supposed to sing the first verse alone. Slight mix up and she didn’t start off on the right note so all join her, then on the second verse (which she doesn’t know), Louie handed her a book so she could “read the words.” She’s 3.

10:00 pm. Christmas Eve. Present giving has never been more of a family affair. We have laughed over Johanna’s cleverly wrapped presents – a belt for school wrapped like a wreath, a charm for Kerry baked in a roll. Kerry’s red rubber gloves for me were this year’s example of her tradition of surprising gifts. Cresing and Annie thought the electric toothbrush for her was hilarious. There weren’t so many presents that theirs were insignificant. Only Margaret was deluged. She also gave presents to everyone – of her own choosing: toothbrushes and toothpaste for Scott, daddy and Johanna. Paints for Kerry, pencil sharpeners for Annie and Cresing, Scotch tape for me. They added to the merriment. I gave Dick paper mache wise men, and he gave me a box of special cookies that he loves. It was an Eve in which the mood was not magic but pleasure.

10:30pm Christmas Eve David Baradas and Dorothy Cleveland, a PCV friend arrive. The children sing for them. We all east stolen, ham sandwiches and Coke. Coke because it is hot tonight. It is good to hear about the adventures of a beginning anthropologist. We remember the Christmas together in Dayton. The outer trimmings are different, but their very differentness is the thread that holds our lives together.

CHRISTMAS DAY

We’re on our way to Baguio. I’m glad we chose to drive today. Without family to visit, there is not much to do on Christmas Day. Traffic is light. Families are out to visit. The children are so pretty in their colorful new clothes. That fairyland of dresses in Central Market has reached the streets.

Baguio has its own Christmas magic. In one day we have combined the gaiety, fun and sociability of a Philippine Christmas with the cosyness and intimacy of an American Christmas Dinner at Camp John Hay, which was turkey, mince pie, and apples. A rug on the floor, a formal white cloth on the table. There are stories and carols and prayers together in our snug cottages surrounded by silent pines.

THE DAY AFTER

I am tired. I’ve celebrated more fully than usual because it has been a shared celebration with many people. For the fist time it has not been a Christmas I’ve received or one I have given to others. It has been shared with the children in their own Christmas activities, shared with the church in its preparations, shared with friends in carols, parties, gifts, shared with our family in a host of preparations. I’m ready now to just be alone.

LATER

This year we’ve had two styles of Christmas. Other years, since I more or less controlled the celebrations, we tried to duplicate the mood of Christmases we knew.

The problem seemed to be how to capture the mood of magic, surprise, and silence that are essential to an American Christmas. There’s no hope of having those things in Manila! And we didn’t. We had a Philippine Christmas with its mood of fun, friendly gift exchange throughout the season, song and sociability. I don’t know what it has to do with the birth of Christ, but it’s good for the heart.

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Phyllis and Union Elementary School

3/25/2013

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Scott walks to Jose Abad Santos Memorial School (JASMS) on Taft Avenue past the music school and family portrait studio.Johanna and I graduate from Union Elementary School (UES), a Protestant parochial school beside our house. Feelees and her family have moved to 4th Estate subdivision because her father, Eddie Monteclaro, is editor of Manila Times. She's at UES so we reunite.

I pass Pilipino due to teacherly mercies and home economics because Mrs. Sayo, a thin, energetic and perfectionist, allows enthusiasm to compensate for weak hand-eye coordination. When my cross stitch is skewed, Mrs. Sayo says noncommittally, that's imaginative, Kerry." My plastic macrame shopping bag sags to the left; she grades it as a hopeful "82". My rice is soggy and tinapay is barely edible. I love to embroider screen covers to ward off flies. We use colorful plastic/paper to create bananas, flowers, and pineapples on the mesh. We turn from this to hats. Then laundry soap carving of animals and women's heads with long hair.

Because Phyllis and I plan to be nurses, we pay attention on how to attend to the gravely ill. From Mrs. Sayo we learn what they should eat, how to change the sheets of someone who can’t leave the bed, how to shield them from dust, light and noise, but to be sure there is circulation of air. There should be a table beside their bed, and a bell if they need to call you. We take notes word for word.

Then the best part: “Take a shoebox and create the diorama of a proper sickroom.” We carve two windows and make tiny curtains to close and pull open. I paste a little sheet to matchbox bed, plump up a little pillow, and set it facing the window. On the table beside the bed, mom helps me create a lamp out of origami paper. This is really makeup since houses have florescent overhead lights. Most of us have cared for someone in our family who was gravely ill, but we never arrange the room like this.

My mother emails me as we communicate about illnesses:
Are you writing about the time you saved my life? I had stepped on a nail in the street, wearing toe shoes (flip flops). The nail had gone right through the sole into my foot. It swelled up and became infected. I went to the doctor (not Reyes), but probably at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital where we had our doctors. I got two shots. One was an
antibiotic (possibly penicillin to which I was allergic, as learned from having it used by a dentist) and the other was an antihistamine in case I was allergic to the antibiotic. And I was given pills to continue the treatment.

I got the pills mixed up and took two of the antibiotic and one of the antihistimine. I realized immediately what I had done and began to fear the worst. I began to tingle around my nose and ears, my first signs of an allergic reaction. Then my mouth. My face broke out in a rash. The rash began to go down my throat, my arms, my body. I couldn't swallow or breathe correctly. Dick wasn't home and wouldn't be for several more hours. You were the only one there. Someone called the doctor. Maybe I did, and, I think, this was Dr. Reyes.

I lay down on my bed and if I was absolutely motionless I could slowly breathe. You came and sat with me. You sang, and talked, and prayed. While you were there I could relax, remain motionless, didn't choke, and the rash didn't itch so much. At some point the antihistamine was expected to conk in. The rash continued down my body, slowly, slowly. Then, finally, it stopped at my knees. You sat there, holding my hand, until, at last, a doctor came and gave me another antihistimine shot. It had been almost two hours. Dick came home.

Sayawan

Hula girls, Nora, Lisa, Eunice.

Foundation Day challenges my aesthetic and gymnastic talent. We are Irish one year in shiny green skirts, and the next year gypsies with tambourines. I'm even clumsy at the American Square dance decked out in red and white checks ("alamand, and then you swing your partner fair..."). And entirely unconvincing with the Filipino bilao clay pots on my head. Not a swan, which is not to say the ugly duckling.

Always the hula girls stun us with joy and envy as they sashay onto the concrete court in grass skirts and skimpy tops. Florence Nightingale Perez is the reigning queen of the Polynesian shimmy.

We are the impossible contrast to the Bayanihan dance troop, who model the pandango sa ilaw, tinkling, and general repertoire one should finesse as a Filipina.

So that when Eve Ensler creates One Billion Rising to end violence against women in our new century, it comes with dance instructions in the Manila, with school kids in an industrial park in Marikina, out-door aerobics in Baguio and the Pride March in 2012.

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Stolen Chevy

2/18/2013

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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.

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The fruit of the camias tree

9/20/2012

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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.

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We eat rice

9/15/2012

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“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

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:

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.
Then flick the switch to Cold. But don’t turn the arrow to too much Cold or it will turn back to Fan.
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.

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No trees of this western world

9/15/2012

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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.

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Sundays

Vignettes of Christmas, 1965
Eunice Poethig to Juliet Blanchard

Phyllis and Union Elementary School

Sayawan

Stolen Chevy

The fruit of the camias tree

We eat rice

Homage to The Airconditioned Room

No trees of this western world

Kerry (Kathryn) Poethig

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Categories

Sundays

Vignettes of Christmas, 1965Eunice Poethig to Juliet Blanchard

Phyllis and Union Elementary School

Sayawan

Stolen Chevy

The fruit of the camias tree

We eat rice

Homage to The Airconditioned Room

No trees of this western world

Kerry (Kathryn) Poethig

Archives

Categories

Vignettes of Christmas, 1965
Eunice Poethig to Juliet Blanchard