This story was originally published in the Ray Ortali’s magazine We Love Books and Company, April 2016.
Auntie Lovely turned around in the passenger seat. She aimed her large, brown-tinted sunglasses at me, her serious face adorned by a floral-patterned scarf worn over her head and tied around her neck. She radiated old-Hollywood style. Especially compared to her driver, Bong Bong, a young man about my age who sported a red baseball cap with a curved visor low over his eyes as he rolled her Toyota Camry down the driveway, through the gate and onto the road.
A serious frown cut through Auntie Lovely’s heavy jowls, giving her a sad-froggy face that recalled the grainy black-and-white portraits in her living room of her father (my lola’s older brother) and her lolo (my great-grandfather), two serious-looking men frozen with amphibian frowns that , unfortunately, I had also seen in my own father (who was Auntie Lovely’s first cousin) when he was locked in deep concentration, and which, at that very moment, I knew would one day be my own.
“I must warn you about the airport,” Auntie Lovely said, with gently rolling Rs undermining the sternness in her voice. “It is not like the States. People jumping, shouting. Vehicles parked any which way. Two truckloads just to say goodbye to one person. Typical Third World.” She let out a weak, embarrassed laugh, and then re-adjusted the bulk of her body to face the street, still frowning. Bong Bong drove past the armed guards in the gatehouse of her subdivision and into the bustle of Manila.
The morning streets were filled with jockeying jeepneys and revving motorbikes careening from one narrow opening to the next. Exhaust fumes and street dust billowed up to the second and third stories of buildings. Figures bent before shuttered storefronts to unlock and lift metal gates. Others in loose clothes hurried down dark streets. One slow-moving jeepney with peeling white paint caked in dust, the number “42” just below its roof, was so crowded that some people stood on a rear bumper, grasping metal poles for a ride.
Auntie Lovely tapped the window with a manicured fingernail and said, “See? Where else but the Philippines?”
I thought of the crowded buses I had seen in India and Indonesia, but said, “People do what they have to do.”
She tsk-tsked, sounding both dismissive and embarrassed. She didn’t say anything more. The Toyota’s air conditioner hummed. We passed the jeepney, and it pulled into traffic behind us, passengers seated beside open windows covered their mouths with handkerchiefs. Bong Bong remained unspeaking as he drove.
A creeping heat of embarrassment washed over me, telling me I had said something not just trite, but stupid and wrong. I often felt that way among my relatives, including my lola and lolo. Especially my lolo, or grandfather. Growing up, I was subject to his examining eyes, as he looked at my red hair and freckles, which I shared with my Irish American mother as if he didn’t quite understand how I — who didn’t look Filipino at all — could be his grandchild, an outcome of his and his wife’s decision to emigrate to America.
Auntie Lovely must’ve felt something similar. At least that what I thought each time she looked at me with her frog-like frown, as unsure how to size me up, or what to do with me. What she did do, for the most part, was let Bong Bong drive me around Manila, leaving me, who lacked Tagalog, with a man who lacked English and acted so self-contained that he exuded an impenetrable seriousness that left us sharing long silences between the city’s tourist sites.
I did spend time with Auntie Lovely during leisurely breakfasts in her dining room. The décor — fine-lace tablecloth, high-backed Narra-wood chairs, and wood-cut bas relief Last Supper on the wall — was exactly the same at my lolo and lola’s house back in the States, making it at once strange and familiar. At the first breakfast, I praised the sweet and succulent mango and papaya cut and served by Auntie Lovely’s uniformed cook, Rose. Auntie Lovely replied with a touch of pride in her voice, “Of course! This is top quality!” Then, with her next words, the pride faded to something less positive. She said, “In the Philippines, we call it ‘Export Quality’ — the best things in the Philippines, we export.”
Now, in the car, she clicked her fingernail on the window again. She pointed to a motorized tricycle that carried bunches of what looked like green bananas tied to long, wooden poles. “Look!” she said. “Those are not bananas. Those are plantains. They must be boiled or fried. It is the only way to eat them.”
As we passed, I saw the trike driver’s determined, pressed-together lips beneath mirrored-lens sunglasses, trying to ignore all the cars and motorbikes speeding past him.
Soon after, Auntie Lovely said: “Look at that!”
This time, she pointed to an ox-drawn cart stacked so high with baskets — at least three-stories tall — that the driver and oxen seemed to be transporting an intricate, woodcarved home in slow motion.
“We call that a walking basket shop!” Auntie Lovely said, her excitement making her sound girlish and hinting at the liveliness she must’ve exuded in her teens and twenties, some sixty years before. That made me think it would’ve been fun to have toured Manila with her, to have known more about what her life had been like when she was a girl in Manila.
The only story from her youth that she had shared with me centered around her husband. I met him the day I arrived at his and Auntie Lovely’s home, dropped off by my lolo’s youngest brother, Uncle Peping, after having visited other relatives in other parts of the Philippines. Auntie Lovely’s husband wore his thick black hair slicked back, and his shirts and slacks well-pressed on his thin frame. He looked dapper and precise, but frail, especially next to her well-fed girth. She hugged me; he shook my hand, and then excused himself. I didn’t see him again during my three-day stay — he was usually resting — until right before I left, when he came out of his room to shake my hand again.
Auntie Lovely’s story, told over another breakfast, was about meeting him. When she was twenty, she attended a fancy dress ball every single night during the holiday break between Christmas and New Year’s, when the weather was the coolest and driest, and the whole county seemed to be in a celebratory mood. Each night, she met and danced with countless young men, some serious suitors and some not serious at all. It wasn’t until the final ball of that season, on New Year’s Eve, that she encountered the most worldly and dashing man, trim in a tuxedo and fluid on the ballroom floor. Then she said, “I was so taken with him, because he was older — ten years my senior — but now he’s just old.”
I thought it funny — a bitter punch line — but the weary resignation in her voice stopped me from laughing. Now, after hearing youthful excitement in her voice, I wondered if I should’ve laughed. Maybe that would’ve signaled to her I was simpatico, even though I came from the States, was so much younger, and had never had driver or a cook, and had never been invited to a formal ball.
Auntie Lovely said, “Here is the airport.” Bong Bong maneuvered onto the airport road. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, and vans parked and double-parked and triple-parked in a jumble along the curb leading to the terminal, just as Auntie Lovely had said. On a sun-drenched sidewalk, scores of people in various groups hugged and snapped pictures as they said farewell.
Auntie Lovely gave out a heavy sigh and said, “Well,” disappointed at being right.
Bong Bong slid the Toyota into a free spot along the curb. He hopped out and hurried to the other side to open Auntie Lovely’s door. I grabbed my backpack from beside me and stepped into clouds of exhaust and blazing morning heat. I strapped my pack to my back and stepped closer to Auntie Lovely to say goodbye. Even with her sunglasses on, she was squinting. But not at me; past me.
I turned around. People approached from two cars, doors still open. My Uncle Peping led the way, arm in arm with his wife, Auntie Concepcion, followed by their son, Arcadio, and his wife, Isabel, and their young children Miles and Sophie, as well as another one of my lolo’s brothers, Uncle Sonny and his wife, Auntie Bebe, and their daughter-in-law Maricar and her young daughter, Pauline, who was shouting, “Tio! Tio!” and running past everyone to give me a hug goodbye. Soon, I was surrounded by smiling faces and hugs and kisses and “Safe travels” from relatives I had just met during my first visit to the Philippines. The force of all their well-wishes mixed with the weight of my backpack had me teetering off balance.
Bong Bong grabbed my arm to keep me from falling. I said, “Salamat!” and saw my Auntie Lovely supporting herself on Bong Bong’s other arm.
She released his arm and stepped toward me. My other relatives moved aside. She strode with lifted head, so poised —regal even — that others turned to look at her.
She said in a voice that only I could hear: “A perfect Philippine send-off; you’ll always remember us.” She wrapped me in one final hug, the last to say goodbye.
Michael Janairo is a former newspaper columnist and arts editor who now works as the Assistant Director for Engagement at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. He has a short story forthcoming in Lontar: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, and his writing has been published in various journals and anthologies, including Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, Star*Line Magazine, Eye to the Telescope, Kartika Review, Maganda Magazine, Walang Hiya: Literature Taking Risks Toward Liberatory Practice, and the Abiko Quarterly. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, son, and dog. His family name is pronounced “ha NIGH row.” He blogs at michaeljanairo.com.
