Leche: A Novel

BOOK I

The Sea They Carried

From Bonifacio Dumpit’s

Decolonization for Beginners: A Filipino Glossary

balikbayan, noun. 1. coined by the Marcos regime in 1973 for U.S.-based Filipinos returning to visit the motherland and witness its vast improvements, attributed to martial law. 2. unwitting propagator of martial law propaganda. 3. potential savior of the Philippine economy. See also Overseas Filipino Workers, brain drain.

TURBAN LEGEND

By the time Vince arrives at the Philippine Airlines departures terminal, it is already bustling with restless souls who, with their balikbayan boxes, have transformed the terminal into a warehouse, as if they’re returning to the motherland on a cargo ship rather than Asia’s first airline carrier. Comedians use these durable cardboard boxes as materials for their Filipino-flavored jokes. How is the balikbayan box like American Express to Filipinos? Because they never leave home without it.

Everywhere Vince turns are boxes, boxes, and more boxes. Boxes secured by electrical tape and ropes. Boxes with drawstring covers made from canvas or tarp. Boxes lined up like a fortified wall behind check-in counters or convoying on squeaky conveyor belts of x-ray machines. Boxes blocking the Mabuhay Express lane for first-and business-class passengers. Boxes stacked up on carts right beside coach passengers standing in queues that are straight only at their starting points before branching out to form more—or converge with other—lines, bottle-necking as they near the ticket counter.

Boxes that ought to be the Philippines’ exhibit at the next World’s Fair, Vince tells himself, as he navigates his cartload of Louis Vuitton bags in and out of the maze. An exhibit that should take place none other than here, at the Honolulu International Airport, he laughs, as he imagines the entire terminal buried in the Filipinos’ most popular—and preferred—piece of luggage.

With a balikbayan box, Filipinos can pack cans of Hormel corned beef, Libby’s Vienna sausage, Folgers, and SPAM; perfume samples; new or hand-me-down designer jeans; travel-sized bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion gleaned from Las Vegas hotels; and appliances marked with first-world labels that, as anyone who’s been to the Philippines knows, can easily be purchased at Duty Free right outside the airport, or from any of the crypt-like malls that are so gargantuan they’re a metropolis unto themselves.

Filipinos will even throw themselves into these boxes, as was the case of an overseas contract worker in Dubai. The man, an engineer, was so homesick that, unable to afford the ticket—most of his earnings went to cover his living expenses and the rest to his wife and children—he talked his roommate, who was homebound for the holidays, into checking him in. He paid for the excess baggage fee, which still came out cheaper than a round-trip airfare. En route to Manila, he died from hypothermia.

Vince, who had heard the story from his older sister Jing, didn’t buy it. There were too many loopholes, too many unanswered questions, like wouldn’t an x-ray machine in the Middle East detect a Filipino man curled up inside a box? He simply dismissed it as a turban legend.

You’re missing the point, brother, Jing said. It’s not the mechanics that matter. It’s about drama. The extremes a Filipino will go to just to be back home for Christmas with his family.

SAME YELLOW SMELL

When Vince, Jing, and their younger brother Alvin left the Philippines to begin a new life in Hawaii, they arrived with such a box. This was in 1978, when President Ferdinand Marcos and his spotlight-driven sidekick, Imelda, were at the height of their conjugal power, looting the national treasury and depositing their ill-gotten gains in the Alps, or using it to buy prime real estate properties in the U.S. under their cronies’ names.

Back then Manila International Airport went by its acronym— MIA. There were no boarding gates for families to huddle at and lengthen their farewells. That ritual took place at the fountain right outside the terminal, where vendors sold soft drinks in plastic bags and photographers offered to capture Polaroid moments for seven pesos, the equivalent of one U.S. dollar back then. Ten-year-old Vince was captured on film wearing a denim suit with a matching cap. Jing, age eleven, had on a faux-fur coat concealing a spaghetti-strap dress. Alvin, who had just turned nine, stood between them, wearing a two-toned polyester suit. And behind them, their grandfather Don Alfonso and their maid Yaya Let, who told them that before Filipinos could touch America, they must first pass through heaven.

No one wanted to be in the picture.

We didn’t come to America, Jing told Vince and Alvin years later, during one of their get-togethers at the Waikiki condo the two brothers rented. We were sent to a costume ball on Gilligan’s Island, she continued. "I was Sissy Spacek in Carrie, Alvin was John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, and you, Vince, who were you?"

"Denny Terrio from Dance Fever," Vince said.

Remember those plastic backpacks we carried around? Alvin said. What were we thinking?

It was a status-symbol thing, Vince said, remembering the see-through backpacks that every kid who belonged to (or wanted to be part of) the upper class had.

Do you remember the nice mestiza Pan Am stewardess? Jing asked.

The one you had a huge crush on? Vince asked. The one Alvin wished was his mother?

Yeah, her, Jing said, overlapping with Alvin’s "No, Vince. That was your wish."

Mimi, Vince said, recalling that it was Mimi who had given them previews of what to expect in Hawaii: Coke came in cans; boys, as well as girls, danced the hula; aloha, which is hello and I love you, also meant goodbye.

She was so sophisticated, Jing said, from Forbes Park, Makati, I think.

And the way she spoke English, just like the six o’clock weather girl, Vince said. China-doll bob haircut, fire-engine-red lips, a mole above her left eyebrow.

God, Vince, the things you hold on to, Alvin said. No wonder you have separation anxiety.

And periodic nightmares, Jing added.

I wouldn’t talk, Vince said. You’re the one who keeps giving George a second and third and fourth chance.

Because a great fuck only comes once in a lifetime, Alvin said. And when you find it, you put out until it wears you out.

I second that motion, Jing said, gesturing her brothers to toast. To the one great fuck of our lives, she said.

Vince took a sip of merlot. A series of snapshot memories of that afternoon at the airport thirteen years ago rushed back to him: of him clinging to his grandfather, not letting go until he promised to visit him in Hawaii; of Mimi escorting them away from Don Alfonso and Yaya Let, guiding them through automatic sliding doors while a porter trailed behind them, pushing a cart stacked with suitcases and a balikbayan box with VICENTE DE LOS REYES and HAWAII written on it; of he, Alvin, and Jing melting in their clothes in the terminal because the air-conditioning was broken; of passengers fanning themselves with mustard-colored passports or rolled-up calendars of the Virgin Mary or manila folders fat with immigration papers and other documents proving their legal alien status; of him praying for his grandfather to appear at the last minute and take him back to San Vicente.

Remember the piped-in music that kept playing? Vince said.

"Times of Your Life," Alvin answered

By Paul ‘King of Airport Music’ Anka, Jing laughed.

Talk about melodrama! Alvin said.

What a sad-assed soundtrack! Jing said.

Oh, my god, Vince said, breaking the silence of nostalgia that had settled between them like dust. Remember the old woman who carried a life-size statue of Christ on the cross?

Jing burst into laughter. Who could forget? she said. She was as old as Gethsemane.

What about those brooms that practically everyone brought with them to the plane? Alvin said.

Vince smiled as he imagined Filipinos walking toward a jumbo jet with their wispy brooms held high in the air, as if they were en route to fight a war. No wonder we always get stereotyped as maids, he said. It started back home.

Wrong, Vince, Jing said. Filipinos came to America to clean it up.

And Park Marlene. Remember her and her goddamn leis? Alvin cut in.

Park Marlene, as typed on her Honolulu International Airport ID badge, was a middle-aged Asian woman assigned to look after Vince, Alvin, and Jing. She was also their introduction to English in Hawaii as a language with missing verbs. So adorable, you three, she told them when Mimi passed them on to her. My name Mrs. Park, but you kids call me Auntie Marlene,’ O.K.? O.K. Oh, you guys wen’ puke? So sorry. But no worry, you guys almost home. She tried to place one of the three leis she’d been holding over Alvin’s head, but he recoiled.

How come you no like? Park Marlene asked Alvin. This only plumeria.

That’s kalachuchi, Alvin said.

No, this plumeria.

But Alvin insisted it was kalachuchi and he wasn’t having any. Vince also refused.

How come you guys no like my flower? Park Marlene said. You guys allergic?

In the Philippines, those flowers are for the dead, Jing explained.

Minutes later, inside Customs: What get inside your da kind? Nishimura Blaine asked, staring down at Vince.

Vince raised his eyes to the Customs officer, whispering to Park Marlene, What is he asking me?

You know, Park Marlene pointed to the box. What get inside your da kind?

Da kind? Vince asked. What’s ‘da kind?’

Three years of learning English at a Catholic private school run by Dominican priests and nuns, where he’d won blue ribbons and gold medals and was chosen from his class as San Vicente Elementary School’s Most Likely to Succeed in the English Language, and he couldn’t answer a very simple question: What get inside your da kind?

Never mind, Nishimura Blaine said as he razor-bladed the box open. Ho, da hauna, he said, stepping back and scrunching his face. Smell like one dead shark. What you wen’ pack in there, boy?

Tongue-tied, Vince held onto the plastic strap of his backpack stuffed with snacks, Tagalog komiks, a Henry Huggins book, and official documents, one of which was an 8½ x 11 x-ray film that showed he had clear lungs, and watched as Nishimura Blaine dug his hands into the box. What’s dis? he said, holding and sniffing a powder-sprinkled package wrapped with torn komiks pages. My goodness, he said, unwrapping the smell of dried fish, you wen’ carry one dead sea all the way here, kid?

Vince’s eyes started to water. Jing squeezed his hand. Huwag, she told him. Don’t.

Nishimura Blaine continued to inspect the box Don Alfonso had packed with Vince’s favorite foods: dried fish of all sorts—bangus (milkfish), tuyo (herring), and dulong, tiny fish that, when dunked in vinegar, soy sauce, or patis (fish sauce), and served on a bed of rice, are called a farmer’s delight.

I can’t believe you stopped eating dried fish because of that asshole, Vince, Alvin said.

I know, Jing said.

Well, they do stink, Vince said.

When you became an American, Alvin said.

Ay, naku, we all better snap out of 1978 before it ruins Vince’s sleep again, Jing said, laughing and winking at Alvin.

Outside Customs, anxious greeters in T-shirts, shorts, and rubber slippers held up placards, shouting, Here! Here! as if wanting to be rescued. Scared and overwhelmed by the loud noise of reunion, Vince and Alvin clung to their sister while they searched the crowd for a familiar face. Each on the verge of tears. Each wanting to run back onto the plane. Each praying to be deported.

From the invasive looks of strangers, mostly brown-skinned with even darker faces, Vince received another lei of culture shock: he had left the Philippines, puked twice during the nonstop flight across the Pacific, been shamed about his favorite diet of assorted dried fish, and endured jetlag for a week, only to arrive on a foreign soil populated by Filipinos and more Filipinos. It was as if he hadn’t left his small provincial town of San Vicente at all, or if he had, it was only to take a bus ride up north to Ilocos.

Park Marlene stood behind them, doing everything she could with her medium-built frame to shield them from getting hit or knocked down by people rushing out the sliding doors with their cartloads of boxes.

Eh, kids, you guys got picture of them? Park Marlene asked.

Jing fished out a studio portrait of her, her two brothers, and their parents taken a month before their parents migrated to Hawaii in 1972, right before Marcos declared martial law. At the center was their mother, Carmen, in a sleeveless dress that showed off her svelte figure. On her lap was Alvin, only three at the time, in shorts, a sport coat, vest, and a bow tie. Vince, four, sat to her right, wearing knee-high shorts and a white shirt with a sailor collar. Jing, age five, wearing kung fu attire, was to her left. Standing behind them, looking slick in a dark suit and pomaded hair, was their father; his lips slightly parted to form a half-smile. Jing handed the photograph to Park Marlene and, tightening her grasp on her brothers, continued staring at the sea of strangers around her, as if she knew whom she was looking for, as if geography and time hadn’t broken her memory of her parents.

MEMORY INTERRUPTED, HONOLULU INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, MAY 1991

At the Mabuhay Express lane, Vince is trying hard to ignore the group of women gossiping about him literally behind his back, which is not uncommon. Filipinos talking loudly behind your back is their indirect way of showing you that you are important enough to kill time with. If they don’t do it behind your back, they’ll do it beside you or in your face. And if you’re not within sight or hearing distance because you’re in Serengeti National Park, or glacier-sighting in Patagonia, they’ll make certain their words reach you.

Mom, das da kind, yeah? a teen, wearing all black in the ninety-degree heat, says in a thick Hawaiian Pidgin-English accent.

What da kind da kind you talking about? Speak English, Jennifer, her mother says, impatient because the line for coach travelers hasn’t moved an inch, held up by passengers who, despite repeated pleas that they’ve weighed the boxes at home using their bathroom scale, refuse to either pay the exorbitant excess baggage fee or sacrifice a dozen canned goods or that transistor radio or VCR or those rolls of toilet paper, paper towels, bath mats, face towels, or back issues of Time and Life, until the digital scale reads 70.

Not so loud, Mom, the girl says, he can hear you. Using her mouth, she points a yard away to Vince.

Her mother digs into her Fendi purse for her Carolina Herrera glasses. As she puts them on, she nudges the woman beside her.

Que quieres, Mare? she says, addressing her companion as Mare to denote the depth of their friendship.

He is here, Mare.

Who, Mare?

The ‘Let America Be America Again’ guy, Mare.

Ay, really? Where?

The woman stretches her pursed lips to Vince.

He looks so much better live than on my Sony Trinitron, her friend says, eyeing Vince up and down through her rhinestone-studded glasses.

And so much more guwapo than that Negro who won.

He’s a gay, you know, Mare, she whispers loud enough for the natives on Easter Island to hear.

Talaga? A gay? Cannot be.

Yes. Since high-school days. He went to school with Nelson before Nelson transferred to Punahou, she says, her words drowned out by the matriarch in front of them, yelling, I told you I weighed the damn box myself at the supervisor, a gray-haired Filipino man, who tries to appease her with, I understand, ma’am, but your balikbayan box exceeds the maximum weight limit by thirty pounds.

Vince shifts his attention to the supervisor—the veins on his forehead are bulging, ready to pop.

So what are you telling me? My bathroom scale is a liar? the matriarch says.

No, ma’am, the supervisor says, unfazed. I’m only informing you of PAL’S baggage policy, which is stated on your ticket.

Silence leads to a deadly five-minute staring contest. The matriarch finally concedes. She hands him a hundred-dollar bill but not without muttering the cuss word that she throws at him like a thousand machetes. Leche, she spits, as if the word tasted sour.

Vince understands what she means, and though it’s been ages since he’s heard the word used in that context, hearing it again brings a smile, small as it is, to an otherwise stressful day. The word conjures up childhood memories of melodrama movies, when deceived lovers, during a confrontation scene, threw it in the face of their cheating partners before walking away, as if to tell them no one could ever break their heart again. The word has a definitive weight about it. It is fierce and final—an amulet to guard them from future heartbreak.

His grandfather used to say it all the time. Leche, he’d say, the word leaving his body like a switchblade—small, beautiful, deadly. His voice deceptively dulce so that one never knew what he was thinking or feeling, if he were angry or sad or remembering, just like the word that has come to mean different things to different people. Leche. Milk in Spanish. But to Filipinos, Shit!

Tourist Tips

Philippines is derived from Felipinas, after King Philip II of Spain. The name was coined by Spanish explorer Ruy Lopez de Villalobos during his 1542 expedition to the Visayan islands of Leyte and Samar.

Filipinos are also Spanish cookies covered in dark, white, or milk chocolate.

Filipinos to Westerners; Pilipinos to nationalists.

Pili is the verb for to choose.

Pino means refined, well-bred, or finely crushed.

Filipinos have many names. First name, middle name, last name, plus a million colorful nicknames—Pochay, Bebot, Pinky, Baby, Buboy, Bobot, Chichay, Dimpy.

Some names have an echoing effect: Dongdong, Bongbong, Kringkring, Dingdong, Jingjing, Kay-Kay.

Other names conjoin the names of parents. For examples JoBert from Joanne and Albert, or Ordette from Orlando and Bernadette.

Filipinos are OCDs (Obsessive-Compulsive Decorators), constantly decorating everything from altars to jeepneys to rearview mirrors to the English language by inserting an h into their names: Ehlvis Tatlonghari, Mhadonna Whigley, Ahlain Dhelon.

Headrush

Window seat. First class. To Vince’s right, a window revealing the clouds of cliché—fields of sheep, floating marshmallows, feast of cellulite. Below them the blue of the Pacific, glinting like car windows hit by light.

Turbulence interrupts audio programming. Seat belt signs go on. Passengers scramble to their seats, banging their knees and hips against armrests, bumping their heads on overhead bins.

Vince, being knocked around in his seat, forgets that he’s an atheist and quickly makes the Sign of the Cross three times. Prayers to the Virgin Mary, Fatima, Mediatrix of All Grace, Medjugorje, Guadalupe, Manaoag, ululate from every mouth.

Overhead compartments pop open, spit out canned goods, portable CD players, toasters, macadamia nuts, plumeria leis.

The tail of the plane rips apart. Vince shuts his eyes to the sky sucking out lavatories, meal carts, passengers, flight attendants, cans of Hormel corned beef.

The plane

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Vince opens his eyes as heaven slowly drops him from an empty sky. The plane and everyone in it have vanished except him. He is still strapped in his seat, still praying to the Marys.

A procession of canned goods, led by a can of Libby’s Vienna sausage, floats past him.

His best friend Edgar sweeps across the sky as if he owns it, disrupting cloud patterns. He folds his giant wings and hangs onto the armrest of Vince’s seat. You coming or not?

Where? Vince asks.

To Hula’s. It’s make-a-date night. Hurry, before you end up with the leftovers again, Edgar says.

Vince unbuckles the seat belt. Hands hold him back, massage his back, his shoulder blades. Tongues bathe his ears, his neck, inside his thighs.

Queen’s Beach, Waikiki.

A bluer-than-blue sky.

A jetty separating sunblock-nosed tourists from gym-conscious fags in butt-floss swimwear.

Vince, in black thong and Ray-Bans, is savoring the sweet taste of a clove cigarette when a balikbayan box falling from the sky thuds on Dave Manchester, a local celebrity and model for the J. Crew and International Male catalogs.

Coppertone-oiled fags, hags, and Japanese tourists huddle around Dave, trying to pull his head out of his viscera.

Vince looks at the sky—Thank you, God—then takes a long drag of his sweet cigarette.

Kapiolani Park.

Dusk is cool, so cool desire is a song of freedom that George Michael sings in Vince’s ears.

A flying blue can with huge yellow letters smacks Vince on his forehead.

Oh, shit! Vince exclaims. It’s SPAM, the ultimate Filipino hors d’oeuvre.

A second can of SPAM whacks him in his face.

Vince runs for cover across the street, inside Honolulu Zoo, in the children’s playground that used to be an avian cage for the world’s oldest toucan in captivity. Adrenaline-filled, he turns his head and sees the swarm of SPAM gaining on him. He slams into a body, blacks out.

You’re ruining my movie! It’s Tippi Hedren, her face beak-sliced; on her forehead, a hematoma the size of a mango.

Who are you? Where are my birds? she shouts at him, as a voice in the background yells, Cut! followed by Vicente.

Vince opens his eyes, startled not just by the bizarre unfolding of scenes dreams often assume, for he’s had many. It was the voice of his grandfather, a voice gone raspy from decades of smoking, that made him sit up and search the cabin for signs of his presence. A voice too distinct and too much of the present to be part of a dream.

The flight attendant, noticing the perturbed look on Vince’s face, stops to ask if everything is all right. Would you like a glass of water, Mr. De Los Reyes?

Vince sits up. Yes, please, he says, seemingly calm, and a cup of coffee. Black. No sugar.

He looks at his watch. Maybe it was something I ate, he tells himself. He pulls out the menu from the seat pouch to see if the source is spelled out in bold italics. It isn’t the dried milkfish; he’d stopped eating dried fish a long time ago, gave it up, in fact, just hours after he arrived in Hawaii. Under Selection B, he put the issue to rest, attributing his nightmares to: fried chicken dunked in fermented fish sauce; two servings of laing (pre-boiled taro leaves cooked in coconut milk and spiked with red chili peppers); leche flan; and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Sleeping with One Eye Open

From Decolonization for Beginners: A Filipino Glossary

bangungut, noun. a contraction of bangun (to rise) and ungul (to moan). See also batibat, hupa, Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome.

GLUTTONY

It is common for Filipino men to die mysteriously in their sleep, as was the case with eighty-four Filipino plantation workers in Hawaii between 1937 and 1948. Vince had read about it in Bonifacio Dumpit’s essay The Contagion of Folk Beliefs: Bangungut and Racial Profiling in Hawaii’s Plantation Camps. The course was Ethnic Literature in Hawaii and was taught by none other than the author himself, a cultural anthropologist who had gone to Hawaii during the early seventies on a Fulbright Senior Scholar fellowship.

According to Dumpit, the deaths of these