Barrio Dreams

So now I am finally back to my father's place of childhood, the barrio of Anonas, in Pangasinan, at my grandmother's house where I had stayed summers until I was five years old. Things are different but unchanged at the same time. I had forgotten about the heat, and the first night in that house after all those years, I was soaked by my endless sweating even as I remained almost perfectly still. The mosquitoes were undeterred by the netting floating around my bed, and I awoke covered with bites my first morning there.

In the main room of the house, pictures of my father as a vibrant, young and finally healthy man of nineteen in a U.S. Navy uniform hang on the walls. No other pictures are there except for his though he was one of eight children. That is because my father is the savior, the man who provided eventual deliverance from lifelong poverty for his entire family. This main room did not exist at the time the house was built. It was added on several years later. My grandparents immigrated for a short while to America and came back with their new fortune. They redid my father's childhood home from top to bottom. I had known the house as it was when I was a small child, so it was a shock to come back to see how it had changed. But what did I expect? It was fifteen years ago since I had last been here. It strikes me looking at my father's pictures that I am quite a few years older than he was when he first traveled to the U.S. to seek his fortune as an E-1 in the Navy.

My father had attended a local college for a short while, the College of the Divine Word, before he joined the Navy, but then dropped out. He eventually completed his college education many years later, but he almost didn't. Only at my mother's prodding did he eventually complete college courses through correspondence and finally receive a degree. When I think about my father's obsessive preoccupation with my receiving a college degree in the light of the indifference to receive one of his own, I want to accuse him of hypocrisy.

My father always used to say that I didn't know anything about suffering. As a child, he developed rheumatic fever and had an enlarged heart. I think my father still thinks of himself as that sickly child who couldn't play games and whose mother took him on daily treks to the doctor, walking with his half-limp body in her arms. That is what I always thought my father meant by suffering. Physical suffering. The story of having no shoes. The story of working in the paddies when he was able. The ache of stoop labor and the exhaustion from humid Philippine heat.

My father had exceedingly high expectations for me. The story of too high expectations by parents is not atypical. But at seventeen, I felt that it was only me that had a father who demanded the impossible. Of course, I excelled academically in high school, and my father's dream was for me to become a doctor. There were no doctors in my father's family or anyone who had any sort of advanced degree. But an M.D. seemed like the Holy Grail or at least my father made it out to be that way. Practicality was the number one priority when assessing life decisions. While I reached for the stars, my father would swat me down with reality before I could even take flight. I was accused of being too unfocused, too impractical. My life consisted of hanging out at coffeehouses and staying out past curfew my senior year of high school, smoking cigarettes and drinking too much. After excelling academically and doing the deeds of the dutiful daughter for the past seventeen years, I felt I had earned permission to do what I wanted. I was excited by my own uncertainty. I took my father for an unfeeling man, even a cruel man when he stipulated that I could not go to the college of my choice unless I was a science major. I took the required pre-med courses my freshman year and failed miserably. I was not captivated by equations or numbers or anything scientific. After my first year of college, my father still kept the faith. I would become a doctor somehow (though I already knew that it wouldn't happen.)

I had an inkling of desire to be something different. My life would not be about being pragmatic. My life would not be about providing for my family before myself. My father sacrificed his life for his family, but I would not sacrifice mine for his. My father was in the Navy for over twenty years, and he faithfully sent a generous portion of his paycheck back to the Philippines. This habit generated conflict with my mother, who accused him of caring about his extended family before his own children. My father talked of duty to family, of sacrifice, of how blood is thicker than water. My father did not know what the hell he was talking about. My father was not pragmatic. My father did not know suffering.

My father always pointed out the kids who were becoming doctors or engineers or lawyers. He always said that the doctors would make the most money. "Become a doctor," he said. "You won't have to ever worry about money." Money! Is that all he ever thought about! Here he was sending money to his seven siblings and parents, and we could barely keep food on our table and keep a roof over my head. I remember my mother's breathless words as she spoke in Ilocano. "What about our children? To hell with your family there! How about your family here?" Still my father talked about duty to your family. I would never have such antiquated ideas. I would never ignore the needs of my own children.

When my father talked about suffering, I thought that he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I thought my father was a patronizing bastard. My father was an asshole. Verbal fights broke out between us and even when I cried, my father said, "You don't know about suffering." I told him to go to hell. We weren't in the damn Philippines anymore. Suffering in the U.S. was different from working in the paddies or having a lingering childhood illness. I hated my father because I never wanted to become a doctor. I didn't even know if I wanted to go to college. Tension seethed when I came home for breaks. Eventually, my father and I learned to ignore each other.

Since I was eight I've kept a journal. I wrote everything down. I believed everything I wrote down was important. I wrote a great deal. I wrote stories. I wrote skits. I wrote poetry. I was told I had a talent for language. As a child I was trilingual, though I was forced to give up the two other languages for English. If English was the only language I could have, then I would be damn good at it. I loved words. I loved putting words together. This was my talent. Doctors sew up people. I sew up words. My physicality dwelled within language. In college I secretly took English classes and changed my major. I would do what I wanted. I would lead my own life independent of my father's desires.

I could not keep my secret life a secret for long. I failed to intercept my grades the second semester of my junior year. My father hit the roof when he read my transcript. It listed English courses, not Biology or Organic Chem or Physics. He cursed at me. He screamed,"Do you know you're ruining your life? What kind of job can you get?" He ranted until his face was red through his brown skin. "This is what I want to do!" I shouted back at him. He fumed silently the rest of the night.

My mother tried to talk to me. "Your father is like that. He doesn't mean the things he says to you." And I snapped back,"Well, I mean everything I say about him. He's a monster. He's an asshole. And I hate his guts." My mother was taken aback. "Remember the commandments. 'Respect thy mother and father.'"

"Well, how about respect for me?" I left home and stayed with my best friend for a few weeks. My mother was the one who came back for me.

"We want you to come back home," she said.

"Who's we? You mean that bastard? Why isn't he here?"

"Will you stop speaking like that? He is your father after all."

"Not my father. I officially disowned him. I won't come back if he's still there."

"Please stop this. He is very hurt. You don't know how much he's suffering."

That word again. "He has sacrificed so much for you."

Those words suffering and sacrifice. "If he's suffering, then good. He was always trying to be a martyr."

My mother started crying. "You don't know the full story."

"I'm sorry, mother. I know enough not to want to come back." I closed the door on my mother. I remembered that promise to myself that my family would not come before me.

Later on I did learn the "full story." I learned that when my father attended the College of the Divine Word, he was editor of the school newspaper. He recited poetry and wrote love poems to my mother. He read the works of Jose Rizal and Carlos Bulosan, two great Filipino writers. He read the classics. He wrote stories. He wrote about his dreams. He wrote about his life and his sadness when he was a child. He wrote of his expectations as the eldest son. This was all very important to him. He found relief from the world in his words. His sentences were his own creations. His thoughts were intelligent. His words were his own. He knew the power that he had when pen hit paper. He kept his papers in a box. The box was overflowing. His life was in that box. He was proud that his thoughts had made that box overflowing.

One day his mother called him home. She sent a written message. "Please come. It is urgent." He came home right away. She told him that sending him to college had become too expensive. "Your older sisters are working as maids, and your younger brothers and sisters need to eat. We do not have enough money to continue your education."

My father tried to convince his mother that after he graduated, money would be no problem. He would find a good job. He would be able to support them all then. All he needed to do was complete school. Then everything would be okay. But graduation was more than two and a half years away. "We need to eat now," she told him. "Your brothers become ill like you when you were a child, how do we pay the bills?"

He appealed to his father. "Amang," he said, "if I could finish school, then your worries would be over. I just need more time."

"School costs money," his father said. "What do you do there? What does editing the school paper do? It does not feed your family. Make yourself useful. You are the eldest son."

"Amang, I am almost halfway through. Just two more years. Then you will not have to worry."

"Two years is too long. We cannot wait two years. You need to work hard to make money. You have many brothers and sisters who have already sacrificed for your college. You have had almost two years. Why can't you sacrifice for them?"

My father knew it was a losing argument, but he persisted. "Please, amang. I have never asked for much. Just these two years. Two years is not that long. The family can find a way to manage."

"Enough!" my grandfather said. "You have to be practical! What good is an education if you cannot eat?"

My father was a dutiful eldest son. He enlisted at one of the recruiting stations. He brought his belongings home and placed his box of papers in the corner of his room. He promised his future wife, my mother, that he would write to her. He first went to basic training in San Diego. He was stationed near San Francisco, California. He was assigned to the carrier U.S.S. Midway. It would be two years before he could see his home province of Pangasinan again. He sailed to the Mediterranean. He learned about cold weather and wore his navy-issue wool coat. He saw a world that he had only read about and learned that it was not like the one he had pictured in his mind. The Navy emphasized discipline and a tall posture. He was bored on the long cruises between continents. Then the day came when he had extended leave and could go home again.

When the bus dropped him off at the entrance of the barrio, he walked up the dusty road slowly, taking in the view of the familiar. His house was near the end of the road. He was happy to be back here. The orchids were in bloom. The children who saw him ran ahead to announce that he had arrived. When he came to the house, a large group awaited him. Two of his sisters were married in his absence, and they had children of their own. His mother ran out to meet him. They killed a big hog in honor of his homecoming. There would be great feasting. They roasted the hog slowly over hot coals.

He felt glad to be among familiar faces and familiar smells. When he was able, he would go to his room and go through his papers. He felt that they had been waiting there like a buried treasure that he had hidden himself. Later, he would sift through them silently and wonder at his words, at his thoughts. He had thought about that box all that time he had been away.

The celebration of his homecoming lasted through most of the night. Some of the guests lingered outside, talking on the steps. Some were involved in a game of mahjong. He went upstairs to his room. His heart beat with anticipation.

He went to the corner where he had kept the box. But the box was gone. He looked under his bed. He looked in his drawers. He looked at the corner again. Was it the right corner?

He went outside to search for his mother. He found her, cleaning up, clearing away the tables.

"Enang, I have a question. Do you know where my box of papers is?"

She looked at him quizzically. "Box of papers?"

"Yes, the papers from when I was in college." He looked at her for any sign of remembrance. She furrowed her brow in thought.

"Papers? Oh, yes, I remember now. We got rid of them."

He stood, a little stunned. "You got rid of them? Where are they now? I need to know. "

"Oh," she laughed,"they're gone."

"What do you mean gone? Tell me."

"Your father was wondering why they were there. He said we should put them to good use. We used them to start the cooking fire. We used them all up just a few months after you left."

"Enang, why didn't you ask my permission first? They were very important papers!"
"We didn't think you needed them anymore. You were no longer in college, so we got rid of them. Why are you upset? It was just old schoolwork."

His mother returned to cleaning. My father stood for what seemed like a very long time. He felt obliterated. He imagined his papers going up in flames, wisps of smoke and smoldering ash caught by the breeze. He imagined this happening again and again. My father went upstairs and found it hard to sleep, though he was in his old bed surrounded by old smells. He could no longer think of the world the same way he did before.

I never saw my father cry. My grandmother tells me he was brave as a boy, even when he almost died from infection. He never cried much as a child. As a boy, he had a dog. When an uncle from a distant province came to visit, they killed the dog because the uncle had not eaten dog in a long while. My father was not allowed to cry then because it would be disrespectful to the guest. My father could not play as a child and the dog was his only friend.

When my mother returned home from seeing me, she told my father that I had no intention of coming back. My father let out a deep moan. It woke me from my sleep though I was fifty miles away. He let out the moan in his sleep and my mother could not wake him up from it. She beat on his back with her fists and there were bruises but he still would not wake up, and he kept moaning. Then he was silent.

My father told my mother that he had dreamt about his dog. In the dream, he had hidden in the corner of the room, listened to the dog whelping as they tied its legs. He covered his ears, and the whelping continued. He covered his ears and still he could hear. My father was very young then, only eight. He wished he could have saved his dog. He had named his dog Pepe. No one else called him Pepe. His sisters had warned him that the dog would eventually be eaten. He had not believed them.

When our two gouramis, Romeo and Juliet, died of old age, my mother wanted to flush them down the toilet. My father wouldn't hear of it, even though they were just fish. "They were the family pets," he said. He dug a hole in the backyard and buried them in a shoe box. My mother thought that was a funny incident. We got new tropical fish soon after.

My father loved our family. On six-month cruises to the Med, he would send roses to my mother. He once gave her a silk dress from Singapore. He bought bagpipes from Scotland for me. He bought Swiss chocolates for my sisters. At church, my sisters and I prayed for his safe return. When I dreamt of my father, he was a superhero. When I was a child I did not know my father. I thought I knew enough about my father. He was strong and distant and far away.

I could be very stubborn. It took me a week before I came home from my best friend's. I do not remember what happened when I came home. It was a long time ago. I think my father was happy to see me then. I was still his child. How did I learn about the story of my father? He did not tell me. My mother told me. She said he still thought about that box, trying to remember what he wrote, but he could not remember. I wonder about that. Trying to remember who you once were and failing.

Here in Anonas, I sleep in my father's old room. I lie awake and think of wanting to return to a moment in the past but wanting to forget the past at the same time.

I loved the barrio as a child. I loved the smoky smells and the stilt houses. I loved the dust between my toes as I played. My grandparents were very kind. They knew about survival.

I walk down the half-paved road to the elementary school down the street. I enter the courtyard. The school is small and the windows are not screened. The children are in class in uniform, and they giggle and wave as I pass by. My father went to school here. He loved to learn though he missed class often because of sickness. He learned about letters here. He read stories. He learned grammar. I love my father.

Today the orchids are blooming, and the sky is partially clear though it is rainy season. It is sticky hot as I walk. The children sing a song they have learned and it wafts through the air, clear as a bell and sweet and lovely.