The Last Karankawas(2)

“Practice,” Maharlika says. She prods her daughter, poking at her.

In the busy quiet of the church, we watch Carly squint at the words.

“Ama … Ama namin,” she begins the Our Father in Tagalog, painfully slow. We look at her, the little mixed girl. “Sumasa—suma—” It hurts our ears, her accent; from our places at the podium, in the choir, by the entrance, we wince.

“Sumasalangit Ka,” Maharlika corrects her. “You know this, Carly. Try again.”

The child has grown, we think as we tilt our heads at her. She is taller than our own children, though Maharlika is small, like us. Was the child’s father tall? In our memories we find only a hazy image: skin brown as ours, with wide shoulders and an arched nose. He came to one Santo Ni?o fiesta and sat in the back while Maharlika led us through the First Reading. He was Catholic, we assumed, like most of the Mexicans here, but he seemed to have forgotten even the English prayers, or maybe was simply uninterested in reciting them. During the Our Father when we reached out for one another’s hands, he kept his tucked into the pockets of his khaki slacks.

If he was handsome, we did not notice. His slacks fit him poorly and looked ragged. We thought him crude, uncouth. Emblematic of his kind. We dislike Mexicans—the slouch of their posture, the growl of their accents, which sound like those of the peasants in the lower provinces we left across the Pacific. The way they speak Spanish even here, glaring when people insist on English, muttering gringo and Tejas and did you know the border crossed us, and all the while we have killed ourselves to learn the hard, sharp words of America, force our teeth and breathe through our noses to imitate their sounds, refusing to recall colonizers or occupation and instead remembering MacArthur, Kennedy, Elvis. But that is only the start of it. Listen: The important thing for this moment is that her man was Mexican. Maharlika loved him and hated our scorn. That one fiesta when we sneered at him was the first time she looked at us with shadowed eyes and saw something she was not part of.

The girl is speaking, or trying to. She casts her gaze past her mother to us, pleading. Baby Manon-og and Gloria Rivera, who have American grandchildren, take the most pity on her. You can do it, we dare to say aloud, just go more slowly.

Carly starts again, breaks again. She fumbles through our words, and we are afraid that what we suspect is true, that she has a Filipina mother but no Philippines anywhere in her. That Maharlika has cast us off, truly. That this—flaunting the half-breed child who came from her but knows nothing of our ways—is her simply going through the motions, another weapon she can wield.



* * *



We named our children traditional names: Rose, Lucia, Yolanda. Virgilio, Esteban, Rudolfo. Paz, Joel. Maria. Lourdes. Maria Lourdes. We named them as Americans: Jessica. Gregory. Belinda. Luke. Kaylee. Hannah. Blake. Madison. David. We named them for saints—Bernadette, Joseph, Catherine—and for political leaders—George, Lyndon, Benigno, Corazón—and for things that sound sweet, that make us smile—Cherry Pie, Little Boy, Honeybaby, Sunshine.

Maharlika did the same. At least we can say that.

We were there after her delivery as soon as the OB nurses would let us in (which, since seven of us work there, was very soon). Maharlika held the bundle of pink, puffy-faced girl to her breast.

Anong pangalan niya? we asked.

“Carly,” she said. She smiled; we all did, remembering the first year Maharlika arrived here, 1979, how the only American song she knew the words to was “You’re So Vain,” she and her mother singing along with Carly Simon on cassette, how that song was the first thing she loved, truly, about America.

Our children were born here, or raised here, and when they are old enough, they will rename themselves. Benigno will not be called Ninoy, for fear that he will share that politician’s fate; Corazón is called Cory, in hopes that she will. Yolanda is Yoly, or Yoli, or Yoyo (whichever distinguishes her from the three other Yolandas in her sophomore class). “Call me Birdie,” Bernadette will say to her patients. Maria Lourdes’s name badge says Marlo, or Maria, or Lola, or, in one confusing instance, Odette.

Long after her mother is gone, after she has cut ties with this part of her, Carly will stay Carly.



* * *



While Carly reads in the pew, we cluck our tongues and turn back to our work. We place the remaining programs and fluff cushions. Near the back of the church, we gather to discuss the order of things. Rosie, go up to the podium and give the greeting. Make sure, Yoli, that the choir starts with the right song this time—last year maraming mga mistakes. Ihanda ang music. Lolo, your family will bring the bread and wine during the Offertory, can you make sure your husband doesn’t wobble the decanter? Hay nako.

We assign Beeb Macaraeg the honor of bearing the small Santo Ni?o statue in the procession before Mass. The doll-statue of the child Jesus, our Santo Ni?o, is waiting at the back of the church as we approach reverently. We part its bronze curls, arranging the ringlets just so. We smooth its crimson robes, spangled with designs of golden leaves, wiping away specks of dust and salt the island air has left.

“Why’s he blond?” We turn at the small voice. Carly stares at us, at the Santo Ni?o statue in the midst of our fussing.

Ano? we ask. What?

“The baby Jesus. Why’s he blond? He has dark hair when he’s grown up, doesn’t he? So why’s he blond?”