Home Is Where by Ligaya Fruto

The girl sat tensely on the edge of the Consulate bench, her flavour c arfully devoid of expression. The bird-of paradise pattern was gaudy on her aloha shirt, the thong sandals looked s do itnly on her feet, and on her head, riding the loose curls, was perched a big hibiscus flower. Her hands were tightly fisted in the pockets of her old jeans as she listened to the aged woman seated before the flip clerks desk. She looked at the woman, then at the clerk, with one eyebrow slightly raised. Too many movies, the clerk thought amusedly as he listened to the older woman talk.He smoothed the passport applications programme that she handed him and read Benita Medina Sales, innate(p) in Narvacan, Ilocos Sur, in 1908. On the back, in the space for names of persons to accompany the passport applicant, he read Lucille Sales, born in Wailoku, Maui, Territory of Hawaii, on June 14, 1931. Your young woman is going to the Philippines with you, Mrs. Sales? the clerk asked. Of course she is goin g with me. The woman said, act to the girl on the bench. The girl looked back at her, and the two locked stargons for a long moment piece of music the clerked fid necessitateed with the paper.She gave these to the clerk and the latter leafed through them with some interest. He glanced quickly at the woman as a copy of divorce decree appe ard in the batch. He checked the names on some(prenominal) documents, then studied the remaining papers. A frayed certificate showed the old Philippine Commonwealth seal, and undermentioned to this were two thick photo copies of the girls pedigree certificate. You can see I was born here, the girl spoke up. I am an American citizen. I cannot go to the Philippines. I depart not go Oh yes you are going, the mothers voice shook a little. You are coming theme with me. This is my home, the girl said. I am an American citizen. I will live here tout ensemble my life. You are a Filipino, the mothers front flushed, then paled. Your father and I are Filipinos. You and I are going back to our res publica.We are going home. Home, the girl thought, and her hand moist inside her pockets. Where was it? For her it was here, where the roads appall between the mountains and the sea, where the breeze was cool while the sun was hot, where flowers grew by the roadside and never seemed to die, such ws the perseveration of the earths ichness. The sea was gentle, the lawns were smooth, and the people . . . At the thought of her friends, the girls young calculate worked a little. She did not k instantaneously what the Philippines looked like. She had no idea of the people. Her mother said that they were her own people, unless she matte no kinship. I will not go, she thought desperately. I will not go to the Philippines, I am an American citizen.The Philippines is so far away, and those who come from there have such terrible things to vocalize about the war. I wont go. My mother cant make me go. The woman looked at the girl, and a dull ache began to throb in her temples. What an unnatural child, she thought sadly. She seemed to feel no love of home at all. She herself never stopped thinking of it fields of rice glistening to the sun baccy plants maturing in the heat nipa houses hidden in bamboo groves. The people talked her language. They are the same fresh seek from the creeks and cooked carabao meat in the animals blood. They worked in the fields. At night they gathered about the looms, the women distort and listening to the talk of the men.That was home, where one could belong and not feel like a stranger who, on the nose passing through, must leave a fee of toil and heartbreak, then pass over alleviate more foreign roads. The clerk looked first at the mother, then at the daughter wondering lazily what thoughts kept them silent. How long have you been here? he asked the woman. Nineteen years, she replied. I came with my preserve in 1928. He worked for an experimental station. Did you live in Maui just before Lucille was born, sixteen years ago? Why are you going back to the Philippines now? The clerk asked with some interest.The woman clasped her handbag. She glanced at her daughter, then turned to the clerk, her paler face flushing a little in embarrassment. I have always wanted to go back, she said softly. And now that my husband and I . . . Besides, I have the money . . . The clerk nodded understandingly. He took up the batch of papers before him and examined the divorce decree. Extreme mental cruelty, it said, and a smile almost escaped him. The phrase someways seemed absurd. He looked at the woman with overt interest, wondering what type of a man she had married.Perhaps a man with some education, for it was plain that the woman had schooling. He noted the sureness of the handwriting on the application form. Her speech, too, was not the pidgin English that most plantation folk employed. The women here. The woman burst out, as though in spite of herself. Ah the women he re . . . Her face showed her disdain. She remembered with acute suffering the young bride who had accompanied her husband to this land fo promise, and the almost unbearable homesickness which had made adjustment not only to a new husband but to new surroundings so pitifully difficult.She recalled to the loss of first one child and then other and at the coming of Lucille. Lucille was her last child, the only one who had lived. Staring at the divorce decree, she thought of her husbands infidelities. She thought of them not too much as separate experiences but as steaminess piled upon haziness in protective merging. Through many years of such unhappiness, she had clung to one bright anticipate the hope of going home some day. It might take five years, she told herself then, or ten until now twenty. But eventually she would go home.And now here was this child frustrating her. This was a strangeling she had nourished in her bosom. She spoke a jargon which she, her mother, barely und erstood. She dressed like a boy, behaved like a hoyden. She chewed gumwood all day long, sang and danced without restraint, went to endless movies. And now she flaunted her American citizenship as though that were important. Her nose was short, her hairs-breadth was black, and her skin was the clear brown of her mothers and her fathers skin. The mere fact of birth in a strange place did not make her a citizen of that place. Or did it?This is not your country, she had told her once again and again. You were only born here. I shall take you at last to the place to which you and I belong. A country like this and yet not quite like this. You will see, she had said, you will notice the difference when we get there. Sometimes she thought the girl was interested, but then something would happen a glimpse of the sea beyond the park perhaps, or a plumeria tree in full bloom and the girls jaw would set in stubborn resistance and she would tell that here, in Hawaii, she had been born and h ere she would remain. This is my home, she would repeat, I am not going away. The same resistance was in her daughters eyes now. The decipher of her jaw was hard, and her lips, carelessly rouged, were pressed together. How long will it take before I get my passport? the woman asked, turning to the clerk. Oh, perhaps two hours, the clerk replied, checking the papres. we need three copies of your pictures. Oh, here they are, and he thoughtless the pictures from the sheaf of papers. He smiled and looked at the girl.The fighting, stubborn expression had been caught accurately by the camera. You still want your daughter included in your passport? he asked the woman, more to tease the girl than to get an answer. Of course, she is coming with me if I have to drag her aboard ship I wont go, said the girl, raising her voice, the fall of her jaw taut. You cant make me go. I will go back to my father. He will not send me away and I. . . She stopped as her mother rose from her seat and took a flavour toward her.Defiance hardened in the girls eyes as she stared up her mother, I am an American Citizen, I tell you, she said, breathing hard, flinging her words sharply against her mothers anger. She opened her lips to say more when a slap, ringing swift, fell across her mouth. You the woman cried, her face so pale it was frightening. You, you. . . she repeated, her lips shaking so that the words couldnt take shape. She raised her hand once more, then dropped it, slowly dented in her chair, sobs suddenly and tearingly shaking her body. The girl stared at her mother aghast. She could not she would never understand all this.