On our special date in 1978, Bim eagerly unlocks the door to his newly rented Greenwich Village studio. Mick and Keith waft from the stereo. Bim drops my coat on the futon and points me towards the rocking chair across the brick fireplace. Above my wine glass rim I catch the same sparkle in his eyes that greeted me upon pick-up at my family’s Briarwood apartment. We toast, and I watch him light a log. Voila! “The flames are so even!” I gasp. Bim laughs with pride. The new 24-hour Korean deli on Hudson sells Duraflame instead of wood. “You don’t have to rub two sticks together or something?” Who knows about fireplaces in the tropics anyway? Flames ignite, quickly, with a single strike of a match.

Over the six months since our introductions at a Brooklyn house party, Bim and I have grown close. On weekends we shoot hoops at Cunningham Park. On weekdays we lunch by the Equitable Life Assurance Company where we both work, and chat after hours on one of the stone benches overlooking Rockefeller Center’s skating rink. About everything and anything.

The fire crackles.

“I have a plan!” Bim leans close. “Move to the Village, check. Quit day job, drive a cab, check. Enter Columbia night school, check. Get in at a top law school at 29, Wall Street at 34, make some real money. Buy a penthouse along Central Park...”

“Ay, naku!” I cup his cheek and smile, happily for him, for us.

“I’m not done yet! Retire early, move back to the Philippines with an American degree and earn US dollars! You want to go back, too, right?”

“Huh? And quit my glamorous insurance job?” Two years, tops! I announced to my weeping Manila cousins before boarding TWA bound for New York. I couldn’t imagine a permanent home away from my birthplace.

“My plan is fool-proof!” He is so sure. Though I saw him first, was attracted to him first; his lanky build sexily framed with John Lennon spectacles and buttoned-down Brooks Brothers under soft blue cashmere. His smiling countenance exuded confidence in fluent English and Pilipino—importantly, his values fit Dad’s top directive: Only date a Filipino. Not like that Jose Rizal guy, a national hero who married a colonizing Spaniard.

I pre-emptively asked him out. Bim is a great listener, carries no judgment. With Bim I talk nonstop. Laugh a lot. He said yes to an exclusive relationship; but called a week later to break it off; by the lobby elevator banks: “I think we should take time to cool off.” Shocked, I moped for a few hours before he rang me up. “Can we go on a date?” that is, if and when I wasn’t feeling too pissed off at him, he asked. When I agreed to meet again, Bim explained he was uncomfortable with the idea of being the pursued and had to act to reverse that dynamic.

“You should consider moving out.” he repositions the iron screen, as we watch flames engulf the three-hour log. A transfer of deep warmth overtakes my body. For a Filipina, leaving family before marriage was a radical no-no; but Bim unfailingly excites my spirits. “Hungry?” He clinks my glass. “Let’s try the sushi place down the block. Are you with me in my plan?”

“In with what? Raw fish?” My taste buds have ventured into uncooked fish territory since Bim took me out for Japanese food midtown; apparently a similar garden restaurant sprouted downtown. Just wash down each morsel with white wine. Lots of white wine. “What about the fire?”

“The restaurant’s right down the block.” Bim hears me and reappears from the bathroom with a bucket to douse the fire. But smoke slowly fills the room, and Bim takes to tong to chop the burning log. The fireplace remains fully aglow.

I rush to open windows, coughing. “This fire won’t quit!” He is shouting. My hands flail to divert the smoke.

Bim rematerializes through the haze. With a piece of cardboard he scoops fiery chunks he then drops into bath water. With tong he pokes to drown the lit pieces.

I nearly choke from smoke; laughing; stupefied. A sea of little flames float on tub water. “Break it up! Break it up!

“Damn it! Damn it!” With the same cardboard, Bim skims the fiery water and, without pausing flushes the chemical flames down down into New York City’s underbelly.

Tired and disheveled but undeterred, we don our coats and stand for a few minutes to inhale cool air in front of 323 West 4th Street. The sound of screeching tires and fire sirens have given way to downtown’s Saturday revelry. We walk the cobbled night streets hand-in-hand, in search of sushi; kiss and cuddle; some more, for the next 15 years.

“Why would anyone want to burn money, Ate?” Pinsan Jimmy’s pleading jumps out of the page I’m reading as I sit on a Queens-bound R train to fetch and take Dad to Elmhurst General Hospital for his dialysis treatment. Pinsan had volunteered to hold down the fort in San Juan, while devoted aunts and uncles and cousins took the annual Easter pilgrimage to Antipolo. Still half asleep early on Good Friday, Jimmy stepped into the living room but had to stop. There crumpled underneath my Lola’s portrait lay burnt remains of a peso bill. “Why would anyone want to burn money, Ate?” As in a dream, he bent down to pick up the ashes, which disintegrated in his hand. He knew then, he said, that it was a message—a warning— from Lola.

When I take his hand, how do I tell Dad? Our ancestral home in San Juan was among fifty other houses swept into flames, triggered, the rumor goes, by a young child playing with matches next door. The smoke could still be smelled in towns kilometers away. Home a day after resurrection, disbelieving family had to seek shelter elsewhere. There were whispers that the fire was someone’s idea of replacing the old neighborhood with a commercial development. The communists also had something to gain from setting the crowded town ablaze.

Dad was tossing pansit noodles in a big wok and I was chopping scallions in the eat-in kitchen when he started recalling a movie he caught on their newly installed cable TV; the one about the 1986 People’s Power revolution in the Philippines. He was so struck, he said, by Ruben Rustia’s portrayal of Ferdinand Marcos and, most especially, by the revelation that the majority of the Filipino masses were behind the communists in their fight against the deposed dictator.

“Does that tell you anything?” I offer, obligingly, as I watch him stuff little brown paper bags into his blue canvas bag slung on the back of the chair. I let out a big sigh, I imagine like he did, when he finally saw me board the plane en route to New York that 104-degree day in late August. No more heated debates about Marcos. No more worrying about his daughter getting into trouble. No more worrying about his daughter getting lost.

“Oh there’s definitely a message there somewhere,” he replies, matter-of-factly. I help him slip his arms, first the left then the right, into his denim jacket. I watch his fingers struggle to insert each metal button into each hole and feel a tug. There was a time when his eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s, his arms firm and swinging with life, his tongue uncontrollably stinging. “Oh, he was really gago,” he follows up quickly and cleverly, as he rinses his hands on the kitchen sink. “How should I say it? Naughty. He was quite naughty.” He punctuates his last syllable with a flick of his hands and reaches for a paper towel.

Oh, God! Not even Rustia’s highly acclaimed performance will convince the movie-buff that Marcos was Judas in real life. I throw my hands in the air, walk past him to the living room and mutter something about calling the car service soon.

“Call a little later, have some lunch first.” He sets two mats and two bowls on the brown metal table. I shake my head. Too much, it’s too much. I clear the lump in my throat at the all-too-familiar aroma of Lola’s cooking, but my voice fails me.

“You know what the real problem in the Philippines is?” Dad continues, turns and inches his way back towards the stove. “No leadership. I don’t see anyone on the horizon.”

I stare at his back and hold back a chuckle. There’s hope yet. I pick up a fork. I know it. I concur. “We will have to wait until little Julia grows up.” I quickly look up, realizing what I just said, and catch the sudden gleam in his eyes, no doubt brought out by the slight mention of his grandchild.

Then, just as suddenly, I see the gleam fade and I look down and twirl a forkful of noodles into my mouth. “Well, I think bait bata should finish her education first,” he shoots back. He slowly pulls out a chair and sits across from me. “That’s why your Mom and I decided to make the sacrifice. That’s why we came to America. There are so many educational opportunities here. What opportunities are there in the Philippines, for you kids?”

I feel a sermon coming and dig my fork into the pansit. My tongue is just itching to deliver its own speech, like asking not what your country can do for you, and so on, and on, and on, but I catch a glimpse of the gauze taped along his shoulder blades barely hidden under the jacket collar.

My gaze blankly follows his frail figure as he slowly walks past me. Dad grabs the edge of the kitchen counter and stops for just a moment. He then takes two tentative steps towards the doorway post, against which he leans his right hand and then the full weight of his body. After what seems to be an eternity, Dad grasps the edge of the left post and takes to unsteady steps, and his feet land on the soft carpeted floor of the narrow hallway. He wobbles to the left and disappears from my view.

How do I tell him that he can no longer take his granddaughter’s hand and walk through our grandparents’ precious legacy?

Everything perished in the flames. My Lola’s faded but beautiful portrait taken when she was a young lass. Mom’s intricate wedding dress of soft lace. The sturdy unpolished furniture handed down through generations. Lolo’s labor of love all engulfed in flames.

“Wala. Nothing! Nobody is capable of leading the country any time in the foreseeable future,” I can hear him start again.

I get up and walk towards the window. I hear Dad in the bathroom, having his usual coughing fit. He has to release all that liquid they give him after every dialysis visit. As I look up to the sky, the picture becomes transparently clear. Dad needs this graft, an artificial link between artery and vein, his artificial link to life. If it gets blocked again, we have to keep going back to the hospital and to the doctors and to the nurses and have another one put in place, then another one, then another one after that—for as long as his body does not run out of sites and survive further operations. This gateway has to remain open and accessible to the other life-sustaining miracle called a dialysis machine, which will continually through artificially cleanse and rejuvenate Dad’s life blood, and which will buy all of us some precious time together.

I turn around to sit back down. I fold my arms. Everything else will have to wait.

Each early morning except Sundays the labandera fills up steel baldes with water to prepare for her task of washing clothes—a whole day’s process of sorting, lathering, soaking, rinsing and drying. Through her initial hours, she squats and with vigorous rhythm hand scrubs (heavily with whites and soiled children’s lampin diapers) beddings, towels, curtains, garments, undergarments, ending with rags, which she gently wrings into sudsy piles ready for baking. Yes, baking, as in kula. A quiet steady process that extends her chore into nightfall.

When I sat not squatted in front of my first washing in 1972 New York, I couldn’t help but smile when I rolled my laundry cart into the basement. All that was required of this elder daughter labandera was to measure detergent into appropriate receptacles (illustrated instructions readily atop machines), stuff clothes shut inside open-mouthed empty washers and drop appropriate number of quarters into slots before pushing the Start button.

For subsequent weekend laundry sessions I brought a school book or a magazine I could enjoy in 45-minute intervals, while I intermittently stared mesmerized at soiled fabric subdued and drowning in automatically rotating waves of cleansing.

I learned quickly that migrating to the temperate hemisphere meant I could skip the long process of kula. Of spreading sudsy hand-scrubbed garments on corrugated metal sheets, so hot tropical rays catalyzed the detergent’s cleansing power to penetrate weaves and wafts for hours. By mid-afternoon the labandera would have had to retrieve the kula and resume hand scrubbing; paddle-slamming; rinsing, and tightly squeezing moisture off each wet pile of clothes—her muscular arms like other Manila dwellers’ a tribute to ancestral washing practices along the Marikina River. Bent over she would have remained most of the day; straightening only to caress her tight balakang before she flicks then clips each wet item with a wooden pin onto the clothesline. She’d resume other chores and reappear before nightfall to unpin and neatly fold laundry into buckets smelling fresh before finally retiring to the house.

After about 45 minutes into my New York readings my laundry is “Ready to Unload,” rinsed and spun. I wheel and release my fresh wash along with fragrant softener sheets into designated open-mouthed electric drying machines. I drop in more quarters and get back to my book.

So here I sit 50 years since migrating from the old country; tasked with cleansing my body and soul. As a writer, I immerse in waters of lived experiences, poking at crevices, wringing out hurts and joys—and I wonder at the cycles I might have missed. What nourishment did I not absorb by not slowing down; by not catching the ancestral rays of sunlight through kula?

Lights flicker to mimic street lamps.
Vincent and Daniel sit on the house porch. They are wearing winter coats. They each have a cup of coffee in Styrofoam cups, which they sip while playing chess to keep warm outdoors.

DANIEL: Did you and Mom fight a lot?

Floored, Vincent runs his fingers through his hair.

VINCENT: We disagreed at times.

DANIEL: What about?

VINCENT: When things don’t get done. But everything’s negotiable. Everything. (Pause) Your move.

DANIEL: Yeah, she’s on me. It gets intense. She doesn’t like when I play video games, but it’s so much fun!

VINCENT: Mario Brothers!

DANIEL: Well…

Daniel makes a move.

DANIEL (CONT’D): (amused) There have been some updates.

VINCENT: She used to catch your Ate and I. We’d be up til the wee hours on a school night.

DANIEL: Ohhhhh, Ate too? I didn’t know that about my super responsible sister.

VINCENT: My thumbs hurt.

DANIEL: I’m ranked—

VINCENT: Ranked?

Vincent makes a move.

DANIEL: Tournaments, on the Internet, it’s a thing. Just like playing chess. You get to be a master.

VINCENT: And you don’t get into trouble with Mom?

DANIEL: She doesn’t know. Moving this, there!

VINCENT: (laughs softly) Best not to, sometimes. She’s a stickler. Super smart, I wasn’t. Not enough to pass those entrance exams to her high school. Kicked my butt.

Daniel stares at him. Vincent picks up on it.

VINCENT (CONT’D): A nerd at heart. We visited on a basketball challenge once, just for the fun of it. There were books piled yay high on desks.

DANIEL: Did you win?

VINCENT: Ran circles (bragging, motions).

He makes a move.

DANIEL: Nice. Mom played ball, too. You didn’t bump into her?

VINCENT: I might have— but we’d shoot hoops in Queens on weekends. She nailed those shots. Your move.

Daniel’s enjoying this.

VINCENT (CONT’D): Basta may bola! If there’s a ball, man, we played! Filipinos! (motions to Daniel) We sing. We love to dance. Your Mom was the disco queen.

DANIEL: Craaaazy! I knew Ate got it from somewhere! Did you take her dancing?

Daniel makes a move.

VINCENT: Whoa!

DANIEL: You didn’t take your wife dancing?

VINCENT: I did take your mother— But I’d rock to the Stones, not Donna Summers.

DANIEL: Who? Not my thing either. What about the Stones?

VINCENT: Dance, like art. Poetry. Fun, but won’t bring home the bacon, you know what I mean? Now Keith, he’s the rock god. You play them? You better watch your rook, big guy.

DANIEL: Got my eye on it. I compose my own, don’t do covers anymore.

VINCENT: What do you listen to?

DANIEL: Shins, Arcade Fire. Indie stuff.

VINCENT: Hmmmm, tricky tricky son. I should move with the times.

Vincent makes a move.

DANIEL: Interesting. Are you sure? (shoots Vincent a look) I’m confused. I’m easily confused anyway— I’m going… there! (makes a move)— Mom doesn’t really encourage me to consider going to the Philippines yet sometimes I think she’d want to go back.

VINCENT: You would be in for the biggest surprise of your life, once you get there.

DANIEL: How’s that?

VINCENT: It’s nothing you would have experienced ever before, I guarantee it!

Daniel stares at him. Vincent laughs.

VINCENT (CONT’D): As soon as you step off the plane, you will see brown bodies. Straight black hair. That you look like everybody else! Not too tall.

Daniel laughs.

DANIEL: You felt right at home then.

Vincent laughs.

VINCENT: What else does it all come down to, success in America? I’m giving Wall Street another shot. Went for an interview. (looks at Daniel) I don’t give up easily.

DANIEL: You’re really feeling it, the numbers game.

VINCENT: Those guys— They’re so young! I must have been away for so long! But, they’re keen on experience. Fair enough, so I said to them, (a formal voice) “Gentlemen, I’ve been out of the country for a few years. Engaged in some business there, but now I’m back in New York.” (back to normal voice) And this dude— I swear he looked like he was right out of prep school— He grinned and said, “So no recent experience then?” I said, “no, nothing recent.” “Oh,” he said. “So you’re a wannabe.” “Wannabe!” They all chimed in. They think I’m a wannabe? What fuckers.

DANIEL: Fuckers. They probably graduated from my prep school.

VINCENT: Ha! You might have better luck!

DANIEL: Man, there must be another way, not to sell your soul.

VINCENT: Whoa! (pause) What else is there to strive for, in the biggest city in the world?

DANIEL: Space? Too many people, too many things going on at the same time. I walk avenues just to avoid Times Square! I can’t stand all the lights. I need some quiet to create music. And a place to make noise. (laughs) It’ll be expensive to sound proof the house. What do you think?

VINCENT: Good move!

DANIEL: Did you consider raising us in the country?

VINCENT: Oh. Well, the schools, the good schools are in the city. Our house was by the university because Grandpa taught there. (pause) But (looks around) there are trees here, too, like where we lived downtown back in the day, around Washington Square.

DANIEL: Hip hang-out!

VINCENT: For outdoor chess. (smiles) To walk Booboo, before the leash law, that was moronic. How would you want to defecate with a collar tugging you?

DANIEL: That’s so sick!

VINCENT: Got a few tickets, that was fine. They’ll give you a ticket for anything these days. But no one hung around in the dead of winter, unless you wanted a fix badly!

He starts to make a move but changes his mind.

DANIEL: Ha! Hahaha!

Vincent makes his move.

VINCENT: Why does your Mom insist on punishing me! I’m so cold, when we could be playing in your living room!

DANIEL: Sorry, this is technically not in the house.

Vincent motions him to carry on with the game.

DANIEL (CONT’D): My college friends would travel far to visit me. Place to be. Especially artists.

Daniel makes a counter move.

VINCENT: Oh yeah? Oh yeah! Watch this, big guy. (he makes a move) You’re pretty sharp! Tell me, how do you intend to make money with music?

DANIEL: Ahhhh. Same like anywhere else! Keep my eye on the ball and get people to come see my shows! That’s why I do it.

VINCENT: Why do you do it?

DANIEL: Because I’m good at it.

VINCENT: Of course you’re good at so many things, you went to the best prep school in the nation!

DANIEL: In the world, actually.

VINCENT: Ha! But no ivy league for you.

DANIEL: No, they wouldn’t want me, and I don’t want them, just as well.

VINCENT: Wow, what I would have given— my: right arm, and a few other body parts— to get into your school. The opportunities! You must be really awesome, huh? You would have been set.

DANIEL: Set how?

VINCENT: Well, with whatever you want, man!

DANIEL: Was that what you would have wanted for me?

VINCENT: Heck yeah! You got to wear a jacket and tie.

DANIEL: You seem to know so much about it.

VINCENT: I must not have stopped talking to your Mom about it, only an unattainable fantasy then. But the woman got you there. The summit! No chests of money anyone would have gotten you accepted! The legacy you leave your own kids, consorting with the most powerful on this planet.

DANIEL: It’s the epitome all right, of how the whole educational system sucks in this country! I didn’t belong there. No time for a life, from dawn til late. Every day, and weekends too. My college was good enough for me. Love my Kokosing.

He slams a move, then looks up at his father.

DANIEL (CONT’D): It’s a river, in Ohio.

VINCENT: Nice one.

DANIEL: What do you really love to do, Dad?

Beat. Vincent contemplates his next move.

VINCENT: I was on track for the PBA. (looks up) I was good enough for the Philippine NBA. But here, no matter how long I stay, I could only go so far. I had to be born into it. I was smart enough to learn all the rules, but couldn’t go anywhere. I can’t ever be president, and I can’t ever be in the NBA. I know about the Yankees and the Constitution, more than so-called Americans out there! But I can’t compete even if I wanted to, even I was better— but this time, this time I thought for sure-

Vincent contemplates down a strong counter move, smiles.

VINCENT (CONT’D): With my US degree I could earn enough to afford courtside seats at the PBA. (pause) But, no future there. Nothing to be confused about. I went, and I’m back.

He makes a move.

DANIEL: Nice. (pause) So you didn’t go for it. Your dream took a back seat again and now you’re driving cabs in New York. Can’t be any easier. Mom never got a ticket. Did you get tickets?

Vincent gets up, paces, running fingers through his hair. Before he could answer—

DANIEL (CONT’D): Oh yeah, Booboo.

VINCENT: Who else do you think taught her how to drive?

DANIEL: Right! A cab driver! (mimics Nene) Hey, hey, hey! I got precious cargo here! She’ll yell at stupid drivers. (with a French accent) Idiots! Watch where you’re going! (laughs. Pause.) That’s why I’m never ever going to drive. I’ll run over someone, on purpose. (pause) Mom’s not scared of anything.

Beat.

DANIEL (CONT’D): Nothing.

Silence.

DANIEL (CONT’D): I was thinking I’d leave the country, if I can’t afford my student loans. I mean, right? There are other ways to live.

VINCENT: You can’t just run away, not for long, believe me—

DANIEL: You stayed there for a long time!

VINCENT: I had to.

DANIEL: Had?

VINCENT: Well, my parents needed me, and then I realized I was there, I could see for myself what it would have been like if I had stayed, if I was not forced to migrate. Already in the capital city, equipped with US college credentials, doors opened. At first I was a political speech writer. Then I opened up a restaurant business. But the law works differently there, I learned the hard way. Suddenly it was down to basics again. Earnings in pesos, it’s a bad deal. Electricity. A phone. Big expenses. (pause) But the pansit was to die for! (laughs)


DANIEL: So… You stayed away from us for, pansit?

Daniel makes a move. Vincent gets up. He rubs his cold hands together. He paces, studies the board.

VINCENT: That wasn’t the intention, that wasn’t it—

Vincent paces, studies the board.

VINCENT (CONT’D): Ah wala wala wala. Nothing there, though wait— Here go you.

He sits and steadies himself. He makes a move.

VINCENT (CONT’D): One thing led to another, that’s all. Time flew.

DANIEL: That’s all, and I grew up without a father.

VINCENT: (looks up at Daniel) I’m here. I’m back to start again. My future is with you.

Daniel contemplates the board.

DANIEL: Well, we have different starting points, different end games, Dad. I’m taking my chances and going for the prize.

Daniel gets up.

DANIEL (CONT’D): Not going to settle.

Daniel knocks Vincent’s queen.

DANIEL (CONT’D): Sorry, Dad.

Vincent plops back and pulls the hood over his head, shivering.

DANIEL (CONT’D): Wasn’t my intention.

Lights off.