You learn right away to leave a part of yourself at home. You fear that if you stand too close to others they'll smell last night's dinner lingering in your hair. Yes, it was your favorite, and yes, you ate so much of it, and yes, when you came home from school you would reach into the frigidaire seeking it. But no, to any public reveal of your home life to others.
It doesn't matter if you shower, at night or in the morning, your home always smells like food and your clothes always smell like home. So, you stand far enough away, but it doesn't matter because you learn so many names that aren't yours.
They aren't white girls yet, they are American girls, because you aren't American. And they call you everything— Chinese, Japanese, Korean—even the Filipinos don't know. A Tammy says, in such a way, "You're Mexican."
And then you understand why your mother doesn't want you playing under the sun.
It doesn't matter if you shower, at night or in the morning, your home always smells like food and your clothes always smell like home. So, you stand far enough away, but it doesn't matter because you learn so many names that aren't yours.
They aren't white girls yet, they are American girls, because you aren't American. And they call you everything— Chinese, Japanese, Korean—even the Filipinos don't know. A Tammy says, in such a way, "You're Mexican."
And then you understand why your mother doesn't want you playing under the sun.
***
There is only one Filipino in your graduate program in New York. He calls you from New York and somehow in the middle of talking about grad school he mentions he's Filipino. You ask if that is why he was assigned to you. He says, No. I don't think that's the reason at all. No, that's...no.
***
New York is different from Los Angeles. The words you use for race are different. You're studying writing and don't know how to write about every moment that reminds you that home is so far away.
At the end of a day, there is no coming home when home is 2,826 miles away. There is no home in the refrigerator. There is no home to buy at The Stop N Shop. You ration what you've brought from home, though you do share selectively. Some of your new friends are eager to listen and taste, but others, there is no hiding of their distaste. They poke and push away at the items you've placed on their plate in such a way you wince at your vulgarity.
At the end of a day, there is no coming home when home is 2,826 miles away. There is no home in the refrigerator. There is no home to buy at The Stop N Shop. You ration what you've brought from home, though you do share selectively. Some of your new friends are eager to listen and taste, but others, there is no hiding of their distaste. They poke and push away at the items you've placed on their plate in such a way you wince at your vulgarity.
***
Some food is dirty. You keep learning this.
You cook with patis only if everyone is away. You learn to like brown rice.
You don't want to explain canned meats with rice, sizzling pig cheeks, browning garlic, avocado for dessert, hot dogs in spaghetti, hot dogs for breakfast, the delicacy of chicken skin, and the caviar of taba.
You learn about SPAM and the American military occupation of the Philippines, Japan, Guam, Hawaii (and Ghana). When your roommate is laughing while he asks, What is it with Filpinos and SPAM, you answer with a question.
Do you really want to know?
You cook with patis only if everyone is away. You learn to like brown rice.
You don't want to explain canned meats with rice, sizzling pig cheeks, browning garlic, avocado for dessert, hot dogs in spaghetti, hot dogs for breakfast, the delicacy of chicken skin, and the caviar of taba.
You learn about SPAM and the American military occupation of the Philippines, Japan, Guam, Hawaii (and Ghana). When your roommate is laughing while he asks, What is it with Filpinos and SPAM, you answer with a question.
Do you really want to know?
***
You don't have the luxury of being taught. To have knowledge about Filipinos is the same way you have Filipino friends. You seek aggressively, going to events alone, until one day you meet Joseph. And after begrudingly saying, I grew up in Paramount, he looks at you and says, I did, too.
***
Your meal with Joseph grows to meals with Joseph and Lara. Gina joins. Nita. Sometimes Bino. Sometimes Sarah. Marissa, transplanted from California, is placed into your life through your sister. They are brilliant. And kind, a table of home so loud that once when you are home, in Los Angeles, the old world is immobile with silence.
***
***
You stumble across this phrase at the start of your search and this meeting is not an accident. This is just one layer that buried the stories.
***
These disappeared places of meeting belonged to Filipinos who found an existence in a culture that does not readily see them. You are amongst them searching to remember the places of congregation.
***
You know what it's like to walk into a place of comfort and anticipate.
There are the signs with words that even to you look foreign and exotic because you rarely see them under such light. Or so large. You say them in your head and sometimes it's your mother's voice you hear.
Inside there's a version of the Last Supper. Or comically large wooden forks and spoons. There might be a figurine of a carabao. There will be capiz—a chandelier or candleholder—the shells shaped into a diffusor of light.
Near the register there might be a small alter or there are donation bins for Catholic charities. There's a money plant or a bamboo plant. There's the framed first dollar that the restaurant made.
Sometimes what welcomes you isn't at all Filipino but images of a colonizer—Chinese (or Japanese when mistaken for). This is (accidentally) for anyone who unknowingly stumbles in—images to translate, bridge, convert flavors discernible under the strata of adaptation.
But it is what is in the air that vibrates all parts that hold memory. The way some consonants bounce off the roofs of mouths, the repetition of syllables, and the way, eventually, someone's father combines a word from here with a word from there. There is the clanking of spoon and fork. There's the sound of scraping the last bit into a spoon or the mother spooning food into a box to take home.
And then there's the smell—the sautéed aromatic of garlic, tomatoes and onion that for the duration of your meal is your aura; the piquant steam of fishy vegetable stew pressing your shirt; and the way all of it stays in your nose through the subway ride home as you stand close to so many strangers.
There are the signs with words that even to you look foreign and exotic because you rarely see them under such light. Or so large. You say them in your head and sometimes it's your mother's voice you hear.
Inside there's a version of the Last Supper. Or comically large wooden forks and spoons. There might be a figurine of a carabao. There will be capiz—a chandelier or candleholder—the shells shaped into a diffusor of light.
Near the register there might be a small alter or there are donation bins for Catholic charities. There's a money plant or a bamboo plant. There's the framed first dollar that the restaurant made.
Sometimes what welcomes you isn't at all Filipino but images of a colonizer—Chinese (or Japanese when mistaken for). This is (accidentally) for anyone who unknowingly stumbles in—images to translate, bridge, convert flavors discernible under the strata of adaptation.
But it is what is in the air that vibrates all parts that hold memory. The way some consonants bounce off the roofs of mouths, the repetition of syllables, and the way, eventually, someone's father combines a word from here with a word from there. There is the clanking of spoon and fork. There's the sound of scraping the last bit into a spoon or the mother spooning food into a box to take home.
And then there's the smell—the sautéed aromatic of garlic, tomatoes and onion that for the duration of your meal is your aura; the piquant steam of fishy vegetable stew pressing your shirt; and the way all of it stays in your nose through the subway ride home as you stand close to so many strangers.