CORAZON, A NOVEL
[90,333 words]
Edward Bishop Smith
5517 S. Hyde Park Blvd. #3
4
Chicago, Illinois 60637 (USA)
312 / 520.0542
802 高雄市苓雅區
興中一路 66 之 1 號 12 樓之
Kaohsiung, Taiwan R.O.C.
[email protected]
A mother’s love means a life’s devotion – and sometimes a life’s sacrifice – with but one
thought, one hope and one feeling, that her children will grow up healthy and strong, free
from evil habits and able to provide for themselves.
• Unknown
PROLOGUE •
I got a letter in the mail today from Ely, my older sister by three years who acts younger
by ten. She’s so naïve, so innocent. I used to say so stupid, but I guess she finally proved
me wrong. The words “Air Mail” and a date one month past, “September 4, 2003,” are
printed in blue block letters on the bottom right corner of the envelope. There’s a return
address from San Francisco, USA, on the top left. With these kinds of letters the
difference between good and bad news starts with the return address. Everyday I ask
God to promise me I’ll never find myself reading an unfamiliar return address on a letter
from Ely. Sixteen times, one letter a week for the past four months, He’s answered my
prayers. Today makes seventeen.
For as long as I can remember Ely wanted to go to America. It was her dream
even as a little girl, here in a place where children quickly learn the foolishness of
torturing themselves with such unproductive thoughts. But Ely didn’t mind the torture.
She didn’t even mind all the money she missed out on making over the years. When I
was working in Taiwan I went through the trouble of finding her a housekeeping job.
She would have made ten times what she made at home. I still remember her reaction
when I told her about the job; “I’m going to wait here. God will find me a job in
America.” I really do doubt there’s anyone else quite like her. “God has a lot more on
His mind than finding you a job, Ely,” I would tell her, but she never listened.
Ely doesn’t have any children, making her something of an ironic social outcast
here in the Philippines. Outcast because reproduction is a woman’s familial duty and
civic responsibility. And if that’s not enough of a reason to put a baby in your belly, it’s
a personal gift from Heaven. Ironic because of her previous aversion to allowing herself
to be cast out, let out or even make her own way out of the Philippines. Eight million
home-loving Filipinos leave this country in search of work, yet Ely, the ironic outcast,
possessing little if any of that same love of home, stayed in.
I call Ely stupid, but she’s only partly deserving of the label. I can’t blame her for
the way she is. In spite of our blood-born ties, Ely and I grew up in different worlds,
especially when it comes to education. Thanks to an old woman and older money, I was
put through a private city school—at a young age I found favor with the wife of my
mother’s long-time employer, a mestizo landlord who owned every inch of land my
brothers and sisters saw until, one by one, they left home. Ely, on the other hand, along
with the rest of my siblings, received half of her education from the rural school in the
province and the remaining half from a foul-mouthed cartela driver, my father. It’s no
surprise that I happened to be home and practicing simple multiplication the very same
day my youngest brother, Richard, uttered some of his first non-“mama” and “papa”
words: “fuckin’ horse.”
My father died five days after my seventh birthday, meaning I have little memory
of him. I’d been living in the city with my mother and the late landlord’s wife for two
years already. I don’t know if I really remember the last time I saw him, but it must have
been on my birthday. After I moved to the city my mother decided she would stay with
me during the week and return home each Sunday. I only made the Sunday trip once a
month and for family birthdays, and every so often, if I was lucky, for a day or two of
fiesta. That made for a maximum of about twenty days a year, if it so happened that no
one’s birthday fell on a Sunday. Those were great days, and I don’t mean that
figuratively, the way people might describe an era of achievement or peace. Those actual
days were wonderful. We were whole.
As long as a home-going weekend didn’t fall between July 5th, my birthday, and
July 10th, 1973, the day my father died, my birthday must have been the last day I ever
saw him. I don’t remember if he gave me a present, and if he did, I don’t know what it
was. I can’t imagine he offered up anything of value in terms of life-long, month-long or
even day-long lessons, though if I’m wrong, I apologize most regretfully for forgetting
them, all.
My father was a tall man, at least for a Filipino. Handsome in the pictures I’ve
seen, but he was simple, too, not like men today. Ely says he didn’t give his children any
opportunity. I say at least he didn’t steal opportunity out from under us. He spent his
Sundays like he spent his Mondays and his Tuesdays and every other day of the week,
horses in tow and working the fields. Men don’t work like that anymore, at least not
here. As far as I know my father was faithful, to my mother that is. I don’t know
anything about his relationship with God. Maybe that was just the timing. He was
married in a time when being faithful had few conditions.
What was more likely than advice or gift giving that birthday is that my father
spent the night deep in his chair filled to the brim with tuba—a Filipino coconut alcohol
distilled in large clay pots hung right in the tree—and the kinds of feelings that were
wholly untelling of his sunken body. He was detached from everything that was around
him, aware of only one other person in the room of seven, my mother. Inevitably it
would have been some days since he had seen her last, and come sunrise it would be six
more until he’d see her again. On that particular day I can only imagine he sat quietly,
eyes fixed on my mother, meditating on thoughts altogether unfit to share with a sevenyear-old on her birthday. No matter to me, though. I was most definitely underneath
whatever overtones passed silently back and forth between the two.
It’s not that my father didn’t appreciate having me home. I’m sure he did. But
why busy yourself with one child when you surrender to four others the remaining six
nights of the week? I was my mother’s daughter – though even that didn’t last long. We
lived our lives in the city. My father and the others lived theirs in the province.
Ely owned a small business when she was still living in the Philippines. At least
that’s what she called it. It consisted of a three-wheel bicycle, two crock pots, and a
steady output of partially developed duck embryos. Every night she parked the bike in
the same spot, a prime six foot by six foot piece of property directly in front of the
cathedral’s main doors, and sold balut, the distinctly Filipino delicacy made by boiling
eighteen-day-old fertilized duck eggs. That was it, a small business of pedaling and
peddling without even a name.
Ely really is different. I remember when she tried to expand her business
operations to include selling ice cream. I warned against the venture, but she was
persistent, determined, and among a slew of other misguided mindsets, faithful. She
assured me that God had told her directly that ice cream and boiled pre-infant ducklings
made for a fine culinary combination.
As it turned out, the venture failed on two accounts. First, the flavor contradiction
proved a bit too drastic, even for Filipinos. But, worse yet, the heat of the crock pots
melted the ice cream. The whole scheme left Ely a bit infamous among the Iloilo City
balut peddlers. Nevertheless, proud of that notoriety and unwilling to offend He who first
suggested the idea, Ely refused to remove the word “ice-cream” from the two-item
plywood menu that leaned each night against the back left wheel of her tricycle.
If I had to guess, I’d say Ely sold some fifty thousand balut over the past eleven
years, forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight of them to hungry Pinoys and
two to a young couple from America who boldly claimed they’d try anything once.
Strange that you can do something so many times over and over, year after year, and then
all of a sudden, doing that same thing one more time can change your life forever.
Bound to their promise to try anything once, Ely presented the American couple
with two balut eggs, demonstrated for them the almost methodic how-to’s of balut eating,
and watched as the partly developed ducks—bones, feathers, beaks and all—tumbled
forth from the last drips of broth, out of their shells and into the mouths of the two
intrepid San Franciscans. For most non-Pinoys, one experience with balut is enough, and
these tourists were no different. (Something about the ever-so-slight crunch of pre-infant
duckling bones between your teeth, I suppose). The one thing they couldn’t get enough
of, though, was Ely.
That’s the thing about my older sister. What she lacks in smarts, she makes up for
a hundred and fifty percent in personality and untrained wit. She’s as personable as an
grandmother and funny as a crude teenager. It’s a combination few can resist; she’s
infectious. When she offered up her services to act as tour guide for the following day
for the two Americans and their young daughter, I’d say she changed her own fate. She’d
disagree with that comment, of course. People can’t control their own fate, she’d say.
It’s all part of God’s plan. Regardless, the day’s tour turned into a week, and the week
ended with an invitation to join the family in San Francisco as a live-in nanny. I told Ely
she’s the luckiest Filipina I know. That they would pick Ely’s balut-cycle over a dozen
more on the same street and the result would be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream; what
else can you call it but damn good luck. Ely doesn’t see it that way. True, she says, they
could have tried balut anywhere, but their daughter wanted ice cream.
Back to Ely’s letter. When Filipinos get letters from loved ones abroad, the first
thing we do is check the return address. A familiar address is the first sign of good news,
or at the very least, insurance against anything too bad. An unchanged return address is
an indication of stability. An unexpected change usually means just one thing: whoever
wrote the letter ran away. It won’t tell the whole story, but ask any Filipino and they’ll
tell you the same thing; a new return address makes it difficult to open the envelope and
learn.
The reasons for running away are as different as the jobs people take up after
making the move. Low salary, expiring visa, and the simple desire for change make up
one end of the spectrum. That’s the innocent end. Opposite are the distinctly darker
motivations for flight.
But Ely’s return address hasn’t changed. She hasn’t run away. She told me she
had a good feeling about her employer and his family and so far she seems to be right.
God bless them.
In distinct Ely fashion, the envelope holds a postcard, not a letter. She hates the
idea that anybody can read her words as they make a trip halfway round the globe.
Personally, I can’t imagine who she thinks might have the interest, the time, or for that
matter the ability to read her postcards—like most Filipinos, Ely tends to write in a
hybrid language alternating every few sentences and sometimes every few words
between English, Tagalog, and one of our two dialects, Visayan and Ilongo. But, like any
mother who dresses her son for Sunday Mass, making sure to conceal the week’s
collection of bumps and scrapes, Ely chooses prudence and dresses every postcard with
an envelope.
The picture on today’s postcard is once again the Golden Gate Bridge. If Ely’s
postcards are any indication of reality, then the city of San Francisco has only eight cardworthy sights; a zoo, a building in a place called Washington Square that looks like the
Intramuos Cathedral in Manila, a crooked street on a hill, an old jail on an island, a white
Japanese-style pagoda, a trolley car, some narrow houses called the “painted ladies”, and,
of course, the bridge. My current collection is stacked heavily in favor of this last one.
One foggy Golden Gate, one sunny Golden Gate, one Golden Gate with a boat in its
foreground, one Golden Gate with the San Francisco skyline is its background, and one
more of the Golden Gate alone and looking glum. I have three postcards of trolley cars,
two from the zoo and one of each of the others. My favorite’s the jail. I don’t know
why.
The postcard says nothing in particular. As the return address predicted, Ely’s
enjoying her job and finds her employer’s family to be overly hospitable. She’s a bit
scatter-brained at times; it’s obvious in her writing. She mentions that Americans don’t
sing loud enough in church and asks about Noelle, my son, but separates the two thoughts
with nothing more than a comma. She asks me how the balut is selling. I’ll tell her
they’re selling well and forget to remind her that I have no interest in taking over her
business. She says I must have loved shopping when I worked in Taiwan, but doesn’t
explain why until she’s done assuring me that no matter how bad things seem now, God
still has a plan for me.
“Were you holding out on me, Cora? Bakit?” she writes. “My employer’s wife
took me shopping the other day and I noticed that everything is made in Taiwan. How
come you never sent me anything good?” By “anything” I assume she means anything in
addition to the river of money that flowed freely from its source—my pocket—crossed
the South China Sea, and spilled out to get her balut business up and running, or up and
rolling, or whatever seems more appropriate for a business built on the back of a threewheeled bike. I have a good idea of what things she’s talking about—electronics,
clothes, textiles, and shoes—and if I’m right, it’s not that I ever held out on anything.
Most of the stuff made in Taiwan is for export only. Taiwanese can’t even get some of it,
let alone me. That’s how Taiwan is, import people—a hundred thousand from my
country alone—and export stuff. “Made in Taiwan,” that’s how it’s supposed to work,
right? Well, not for me.