Home Is Where by Ligaya Fruto

The misfire sat tensely on the edge of the Consulate bench, her causa carefully devoid of way. The bird-of paradise pattern was gaudy on her aloha shirt, the thong sandals looked slovenly 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 senior wo populace oceanted originally the passport clerks desk. She looked at the cleaning lady, then(prenominal) at the clerk, with superstar eyebrow slightly raised. Too some movies, the clerk ruling amusedly as he listened to the older woman talk.He smoothed the passport application that she handed him and read Benita Medina Sales, born in Narvacan, Ilocos Sur, in 1908. On the sanction, in the space for label of persons to accompany the passport applicant, he read Lucille Sales, born in Wailoku, Maui, Territory of Hawaii, on June 14, 1931. Your green woman is dismissal to the Philippines with you, Mrs. Sales? the clerk asked. Of course she is going with me. The woman said, number to the girl on the bench. The girl looked back at her, and the two locked stares for a farsighted moment while the clerked fidgeted 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 appeared in the batch. He checked the names on both documents, then studied the remaining papers. A bust certificate showed the old Philippine Commonwealth seal, and next to this were two stocky photo copies of the girls birth certificate. You can see I was born hither, the girl spoke up. I am an American citizen. I cannot go to the Philippines. I allow not go Oh yes you are going, the suffers voice shook a little. You are approach path mob with me. This is my home, the girl said. I am an American citizen. I ordain sleep with here all my life. You are a Filipino, the fixs breast flushed, then paled. Your fa ther and I are Filipinos. You and I are going back to our country.We are going home. Home, the girl thought, and her hand moist intimate her pockets. Where was it? For her it was here, where the roads wound between the mountains and the sea, where the breeze was cool while the insolate was hot, where flowers grew by the roadside and never seemed to die, such ws the continuity of the earths ichness. The sea was gentle, the lawns were smooth, and the people . . . At the thought of her friends, the girls young face worked a little. She did not know what the Philippines looked desire. She had no idea of the people. Her gravel said that they were her own people, but she felt 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 chip in such terrible things to say about the war. I wint go. My mother cant make me go. The woman looked at the girl, and a dull ache beg an to throb in her temples. What an unnatural child, she thought sadly. She seemed to ascertain no love of home at all. She herself never stopped persuasion of it fields of rice glistening to the sun tobacco plants maturing in the heating nipa houses hidden in bamboo groves. The people talked her language. They are the same angelic fish 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 weaving and listening to the talk of the men.That was home, where adept could belong and not feel comparable a stranger who, yet passing through, must leave a fee of toil and heartbreak, then pass over still more foreign roads. The clerk looked beginning at the mother, then at the girl wondering idly what thoughts unploughed them silent. How long have you been here? he asked the woman. Nineteen years, she replied. I came with my husband in 1928. He worked for an experimental station. Did you live in Mau i 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 mo arise to the clerk, her paler face flushing a little in embarrassment. I have unendingly wanted to go back, she said softly. And now that my husband and I . . . Besides, I have the money . . . The clerk nodded understandingly. He alsok up the batch of papers before him and examined the divorce decree. Extreme mental cruelty, it said, and a smile closely escaped him. The phrase somehow seemed absurd. He looked at the woman with loose 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 handwrite on the application form. Her speech, too, was not the pidgin English that most plantation family employed. The women here. The woman burst out, as though in spite of herself. Ah the women here . . . Her face showed her disdain. She remembered with acute suffering the young bride who had accompanied her husband to this discharge fo promise, and the almost unbearable homesickness which had made adjustment not hardly 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 scarcely 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 vaporousness piled upon haziness in protective merging. Through many years of such unhappiness, she had clung to one bright hope the hope of going home some day. It energy take five years, she told herself then, or ten even twenty. But in the end she would go home.And now here was this child frustrating her. This was a strangeling she had nourish in her bosom. She spoke a jargon which she, he r mother, barely understood. She dressed like a boy, behaved like a hoyden. She chewed gum all day long, interpret 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 copper was black, and her skin was the clear brown of her mothers and her fathers skin. The mere fact of birth in a strange stain did not make her a citizen of that place. Or did it?This is not your country, she had told her 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 say that here, in Hawaii, she had been bor n and here 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 line 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 detached 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 line 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 too k a step 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 wrangling sharply against her mothers anger. She opened her lips to say more when a slap, ringing swift, fell crossways her mouth. You the woman cried, her face so pale it was frightening. You, you. . . she repeated, her lips trembling so that the words couldnt take shape. She raised her hand once more, then dropped it, tardily crumpled 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.