Magdaragat, p.14
Magdaragat, page 14
One afternoon at my parents’ house, while the rest of the family is getting ready to leave for one of our planned outings, I catch one of my aunts looking at the view from my parents’ living room window. Turning to face me, she says, “Look, there are no people walking in the streets here — life is so lonely in Canada!” I remember feeling a sudden urge to tell her that this is an unfair comparison because my parents’ house is located in a quiet suburban neighbourhood and that this is far from how all Canadians live, but then I pause and realize that she is specifically referring to my parents’ experience of Canadian life, which is lonely, at least compared to the life they had in the Philippines. In that moment, I see clearly the life that my parents left behind: a life of company and bustle, of noisy mealtimes and street food vendors, of TV shows and movies in which they got all the jokes, of pouring rain and city-wide flooding, of near-constant close proximity with family members, of a language and a culture of which they were in full command. It is the world that I always get a taste of when I visit the Philippines, the world I am getting a taste of again as my extended family spends time with us here. This is the life that my parents have to steel themselves to abandon in order to be able to provide for us and for everyone else that matters to them. Such is the plight and the irony of all transglobal economic migrants: sometimes, the best way to show your love is to leave.
6.
Once, I have to lift a balikbayan box by myself. The box has fallen off the baggage cart that I am in charge of pushing, likely because I was too hasty in loading it onto the cart at the carousel. The box hits the floor with a muffled thud. My dad has gone ahead with our passports and declaration forms to line up at the customs area, followed by my mom and sisters, all of whom are eager to exit the airport and see our extended family gathered like groupies just outside the concourse doors. I struggle to lift the box for several minutes, with little success. After a while, I discover that I can raise the box a few inches off the ground if I wedge a foot underneath it and kick while stabilizing the box on either side with my hands. This, I realize, allows me to lift the box just high enough to plant the edge onto the cart’s platform, and from there, with a strong heave, I can push the rest of the box onto the cart — voila! Once the box is secure on the cart, I walk briskly to catch up with my family at the customs area, where I know I will find them, waiting in line for me.
Leon Aureus
Just My Imagination
While she washes the breakfast dishes, Delia thinks about what to do with the drafty windows in the bedroom where Mama and Papa are going to stay when they arrive in two months. It will be the middle of November by then, with winter right on their doorstep. Even the fall months here feel colder than any “winter” she’d ever experienced in Naga, so she plans on buying cellophane tape and plastic sheets for the windows and more warm blankets (they are on sale right now at Bargain Harolds) so her parents won’t do a U-turn and immediately decide to go back to the Philippines after the first cold gust of wind off the lake hits them.
She momentarily considers delaying their arrival to the summertime so the cold shock won’t be so extreme but immediately dismisses the thought. Enough time has passed. Three years. And now the immigration paperwork is approved, the plane tickets reserved, and they will be reunited in two months. Papa will walk Jun-Jun to school and help him with his studies, Mama will cook sotanghon, and gulay natong, and Bikol express (and all the foods she is craving in her mother’s signature style), and they will both babysit Joy so she can work full-time to help Junior with the ever-growing expenses for the very small two-bedroom semi-detached house they have just bought in the east end of Toronto.
Two months! It seems like a dream. A happy dream that could almost make her laugh, shout, cry for joy. The first three years here in Canada have been so lonely. Of course, she has her young family and they are her world, and Junior’s Ma and several of his brothers and sisters are also here in Toronto with them, but beyond her second cousin Odette, there isn’t anyone here for her, with her. No one to share and confide how difficult it is to settle into a new country, to build a new home from scratch.
When they first arrived in Toronto with their two children — four-year-old son Jun-Jun and ten-month-old daughter Joy — they stayed with Junior’s sister (and her very makulit three-year-old son) in a small one-bedroom apartment in St. James Town. All their worldly belongings were stacked in one corner of that sparsely furnished fifteenth-floor unit. The kids slept with Delia on a small pullout bed while Junior slept on the parquet wood floor.
In the rare quiet moments of those early days, when her husband was out papering the city with his resumés and the kids were napping while their meagre savings melted away, she would sit on the cement and rust balcony, look out over the city, and allow herself to cry a little, despair a little, wondering if they had made the right decision.
At the time, Junior was making good money in the Philippines. His family owned and operated a printing press and a small newspaper in Manila, but with all the gulo happening, with Marcos declaring Martial Law, everything was starting to look so unstable. When Junior, Manny, the newspaper’s city editor, and other several writers were taken in for questioning with no explanation other than “public security” following the bombings at the candidates’ debate, the decision was made. They were going to Toronto to start a new life with greater opportunity — for themselves, for their children.
Speaking of which, where is that boy?
“Jun-Junnn! It’s already eight o’clock! If you don’t hurry up you’re going to be late again!”
No response. Hay naku, that boy always has his head in the clouds, always daydreaming! Only two weeks into grade one and she has already received three late notices from the school office. He is very bright and imaginative but that often results in a glacial pace as he observes the world around him and comes up with all sorts of stories, both real and fantastic. She also guesses that the feet dragging is due to the awkwardness of still trying to fit in at school.
She still remembers accompanying him on his first day. When they introduced him to his new class and he was asked to tell everyone what his name was, he enthusiastically replied, “Jun-Jun!” and was welcomed by the many giggles and quizzical looks from his new schoolmates. Her stomach tightened as she saw him recoil a little bit at their innocent but not so encouraging response.
“You’re in Canada now, anak,” she told him as they walked home that day. “In Canada, you’re no longer Jun-Jun, your real name is Joseph.”
He looked down at the pavement, contemplating this new reality suddenly presented to him.
“If you want, we can call you Joe?” she said, trying to be helpful and also break the silence.
After a few quiet seconds, he looked up.
“It’s okay, Mama. I like Joseph better than Joe. I will be Joseph now,” he said with a faint hint of sadness.
He was always proud of the fact that he shared the same name as his Lolo and his Papa, but she could also see the distant mourning in his eyes for the person he once was, for the life they were leaving behind. She held his hand a little tighter and joined him in that feeling as they stepped forward into this new life together, carrying a Star Wars backpack and a little bit of hope for the future.
* * *
“Joseph! Finish brushing your teeth and come down now! I still have to bring your sister to Tita Lucy’s and you’re going to make me late for work! Naku, this boy, hurry up!”
No reply. What is he doing up there? She puts the last of the cereal bowls in the dish rack (Cap’n Crunch is on sale at Bargain Harolds — remember to pick up three boxes), hurriedly dries her hands, looks over to check that Joy is securely in her booster chair and finishing up the last of her apple slices at the kitchen table, then walks over to the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor.
“Ssst! Where are you now! Come on, you don’t want Mrs. Sanderson to call you to the office again!”
Still no answer. The silence is slightly uncomfortable as sunlight shines onto the narrow stairway with faux-wood-panelled walls on either side of it. Glimmers of dust dance in the sunbeam lighting the stairs, which are covered with a dark burnt orange shag carpet left by the previous owners. Her mind races, shifting from irritation at the thought that he may have crawled back into bed and gone back to sleep, to panic that he might have somehow injured himself.
“Jun-Jun? Don’t make me come up there!”
Glancing over to confirm that Joy’s still okay, she quickly goes up the stairs, making sure to stomp loudly enough so her son understands the gravity of the situation he’s putting himself in by dawdling like this.
Above the upstairs landing, there’s a big poster of The Thirty-Nine Presidents of the United States of America, featuring portraits from George Washington all the way to Jimmy Carter. Another remnant, a curiosity from the previous residents that she just hasn’t had the time or energy to replace yet. The blank stares of these white-wigged white men, most of them unknown to her, are a disconcerting welcome at the top of the stairs that she’s been meaning to get rid of since day one. But when you have house payments, and grocery bills, and hydro bills, and a two-year-old and a six-year-old, and a (feels like) hundred-year-old Chevy Nova, and a second language to wrestle with, and a new job as a sales associate in a downtown furniture shop, and a tired, sometimes cranky, husband who works alternating day and night shifts at the city filtration plant,
and,
and,
and,
some things you just have to let slip.
But she’ll make sure to change it before Mama arrives to save herself from any commentary. She can already hear her:
“Hay, Delia. Why do you leave this ugly painting up here? It’s so panget! And don’t you remember what the Americanos did to our country?”
Her Mama isn’t a fan of the Americans, or the Japanese, or simply the Second World War that took her first husband. She met her second husband (Delia’s Papa), who was also a widower, a year after the war. In addition to the two sons and one daughter her Mama had from her first marriage, they had three more boys and two girls. She was the youngest and, no one would argue, the favourite. Mama and Papa could hardly speak when she told them of her plans to immigrate to Canada. She could hardly believe it herself. So they barely spoke about it until it was time to go and they suddenly found an ocean and a continent between them.
* * *
Upstairs, to the left of the landing, is the bathroom and the kids’ bedroom. Strangely, it doesn’t look like Jun-Jun is in either room. She quickly checks under his small twin bed and Joy’s crib just to make sure he’s not hiding. Jun-Jun has decorated the teal-blue walls of the room with stickers of the Superfriends and pictures he’s drawn of G-Force, the Flintstones, and a handful of sci-fi and fantasy beings of his own creation. As she enters the bathroom, a light breeze blows in from the partly open window that looks out into the backyard. The faucet is still slightly running, and his toothbrush is oddly on the counter instead of being returned to the toothbrush holder. She rinses the toothbrush that still has toothpaste residue on it before returning it to the holder and tightening the faucet.
What’s going on here?
“Anak, come on. This isn’t funny. Come out now. We don’t have time for this.”
She crosses over the small landing to their bedroom. The drawn curtains have made the room slightly darker and her eyes have to adjust a bit as she scans the room. It’s so quiet that at first it also appears to be empty. But then she sees it. Really you couldn’t miss it, and she’s startled just a little bit by the sight.
There’s a small mound in the middle of their bed. It doesn’t move, but it’s about the size of a six-year-old boy. It’s comical and creepy at the same time. Curled up under a forest green woollen blanket, he looks like a small creature or maybe more like a hill, like one of those green rolling hills you often see back home. This one though, a lone solitary hill.
“Hay naku, Jun-Jun, you scared me. Come out from under there!”
He doesn’t move. Impatient to make sure he’s okay and also because they’re running even later now, she pulls the blanket off. He’s curled up in a ball — thankfully he looks uninjured and is breathing. He’s covering his ears with his hands, his eyes are tightly shut, and he’s frozen like a statue — well, not quite; she notices he’s shaking.
“Oh my God, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
He whimpers then mumbles something.
“Is it gone?”
“What are you talking about? What’s gone?”
Slightly unnerved, Delia sits on the bed beside her son and scans the room for whatever he might be talking about. A squirrel? A cat? Oh, please don’t be a raccoon or a mouse.
“Smmk!”
“What?”
“Like a cloud!”
“What!?”
“Smoke, smoke. Mama, a grey cloud!” he says, eyes still tightly shut. She checks his forehead for any trace of a fever. The poor boy looks pale and afraid. It looks like he’s seen a —
The thought is interrupted by seeing the time on the bedside alarm clock and her concern for her other child who’s been left alone for far too long now downstairs. She chooses to be practical and irritated rather than be carried away by this flight of imagination. Fighting back the urge to get angry, she pulls him up and into her arms.
“Oh my God, Jun-Jun. It’s nothing. There’s nothing here. Open your eyes. Look around. Mama’s here and you’re safe, na. Look. Come on, we have to go. Your sister is alone by herself downstairs.”
The boy is warm and perspiring in her arms as he cautiously opens his eyes and looks around. She feels the tension relax in his body as he rests his chin on her shoulder, still cautiously scanning the room.
It’s that imagination of his again, she figures. He spooked himself. Like when he said the Child Catcher from the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was creeping around the back alley. Or when King Kong was peeking in through the basement window. Or when the ghost lady from Fiddler on the Roof —
“It came in from the window, Mama! While I was brushing my teeth. At first it was just some grey smoke, then it started getting bigger, like a cloud, then it started taking the shape of a face and it was looking at me and coming toward me and — and I ran and it followed me! And its mouth was moving! It was saying something!”
A chill runs through her, but she shrugs it off with the practicality of the fact that he is definitely going to be late for school again, and she can’t afford to be late for the job she just started two weeks ago. Now Joy is crying downstairs.
“Okay, that’s enough.”
“But Mama, it was really —”
“Tama na, Jun-Jun! That’s enough stories from you. Your imagination, talaga! I’m going to tell your Papa about this when he gets home and you’re not going to have TV or comic books for a week! Let’s go!”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Jun-Jun!”
“I don’t want to!”
“Okay fine, you can stay here with the ghost.”
She gets up and pretends to go. Jun-Jun’s face crumples, tears glistening on his cheeks, and she immediately regrets the mean impulse brought on by her own stress and disquiet. She rushes back to the bed and embraces him, his warm tears dampening her shirt.
If her father were here right now, he would surely be angry with her. He served in the military during the war and was notorious for being incredibly strict and disciplined. However, when it came to his apo, his “Little Jeprox,” he melted like butter in the sun and showed a fanciful side that no one ever knew existed. He had a soft spot for Jun-Jun and was the one that encouraged the boy’s flights of fancy in their earliest stages.
While seated on the kudkuran ng niyog — the coconut grating bench — he would have Jun-Jun ride behind him on their magical horse, Silver, and they would travel to faraway lands in search of a magical anting-anting. “Heigh ho Silver!” they would yell in unison, over the sound of grating that doubled as hoofbeats. Sometimes, in the early morning, he would take the boy for walks by the river and tell him stories of the duendes that watched them from the trees.
She remembers how tightly they embraced one another at the departure gate and how his eyes shone with sadness and his voice wavered as he tried to comfort the boy clinging to his neck. Delia feels her cheeks warmly flush and she holds her son a little tighter. She can almost hear her father’s voice now, hanging alongside the specks of dust, dancing on the sunbeam.
“We will see each other again, anak. Do not worry, okay? You have to be brave, anak. Lolo loves you, okay? Your Lolo loves you.”
