AlliterAsian (11 page)

The last day I saw her was in their cluttered house in Vancouver's east end. Although she recognized almost no one, she knew me. I would bend close to her and suddenly there would be her sweet, sweet smile.

Dad used to say she was
fukai
, a person of depth. Now she was
kawai
, cute and sweet. One of the best things from old Japan is tenderness for the very young and the very old. He was with her all the time unless he was out shopping. Most days he sat, back hunched, right forefinger stabbing, clack clack, at the keys of his typewriter on an up-ended apple box in a corner of the dining room. Huge paper clips hung from nails on the outside of the box, with church records, mailing addresses. He served guests his specialty,
ohagi
, sweet azuki beans on small balls of sticky rice. He kept his connections to the end. But most of all, he was devoted to his wife.

She, who had served him, was in the end, served by him. The measure of a good life, I'm told, is the way it ends. Hers was a good ending. Dad took complete care of her for years. He cut up her grapefruit in the morning, blended the lunch
okazu
into a soupy mush, brushed her thinning hair, encouraged her to say a few words.
He changed her, dressed her, sang to her. He would tell me about little improvements in her memory. He would sit on the couch, holding her hand, his mouth to her ear. His voice was youthful. Deep and rich. She would sing with him. Soprano, clear and pure once. Croaky finally.

“Do you know what's happening today, Mama?” I shouted in her ear. She was not able to manage hearing aids. “Do you know that I'm going back to Toronto today?”

She turned on the couch where she sat most of the time, her body stiffly facing me, her eyes drinking in whatever I was doing. “I am connected to you,” her eyes said. “I know who you are.”

She was wearing one of her white sweaters, a necklace, and slacks. Dad changed what she wore every day. They had two beds side by side in his study. Many nights he could not sleep, he said, as she did not know night from day. He held her hand as they walked together from room to room.

She gazed up at me, her demeanor, as always, to the very last, dignified, her back as straight as she could manage. Even in that day before she died, she struggled to maintain her dignity. She was lucid as a dew-drop for a moment.

“Nozomi?” Her face was lit with love. “Nozomi?”

As a child I disliked the z sound in my Japanese name. Z for snoring or for sawing wood. The red zig zag across the comic book page.

“Toronto
ni iku no
?” Are you going to Toronto?

“I'll be back soon.” I had no idea at the time how soon that would be.

She gazed up at me through cloudy eyes and told me she was now living in
tengoku
, in heaven. She was already in eternal life. Then she broke into an uncontrollable laugh, her almost translucent hand holding back her ill-fitting false teeth.

“Is something funny?”

“
Nannimo okashi kunai
. No. Nothing funny at all.” She shook in spasms of giggles.

“Then why are you laughing?”

“I don't know.” More giggles.

She choked the next morning on a piece of toast and peanut butter. Mama, my truth-loving mother, who played the organ and sang, who patched the sheets and patched the patches on the sheets, whose silence was patched over everything, was dead. Dad had gone downstairs “for just five minutes,” to deliver some mail to the tenant in the basement. When he returned, she was on the floor. She was still breathing. Her last moments on earth were spent in her husband's arms while he pleaded with her not to die.

In my dream, heaven welcomed her, with singing, with dancing. But she was already in
tengoku
, she'd said. She was surrounded every day by heaven's kindness and the transition must have been seamless. The depth of forgiveness between Dad and Mama was my introduction to the infinite light.

       
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Joy Kogawa is the author of
Obasan
, one of the handful of Canadian novels that have become essential reading for a nation. Interned with her Japanese-Canadian family during World War II, she has worked tirelessly to educate and help redress a dark moment in our history. She is a member of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of the Rising Sun in Japan. A book of her selected poems,
A Garden of Anchors
, was published in 2003. Kogawa has been working on
Gently to Nagasaki
for many years. She divides her time between Toronto and Vancouver.

Finding My Way Back Home

Ricepaper
19, no. 3 (2014)

Lou Villahermosa

My grandfather, Lolo, had a fascination for balete trees. This fascination stemmed from the belief that they are known to house supernatural beings in the Philippines. He took pleasure in telling us stories about the tree, to the point where we weren't quite sure what he enjoyed most—narrating these mysterious stories or seeing the wonder and terror in our eyes as he related these tales. Nevertheless, despite the fear we felt as our imaginations ran wild, we loved it. We were terrified, yet enchanted.

During my vacation back to the Philippines, it didn't come as a surprise when my dad pointed out, “Your Lolo planted that balete tree.” It was a healthy sapling, standing no more than five feet in height, its roots firmly attached to a bending, tall coconut tree.

“Typical,” I chuckled. “Of all things, of course Lolo would plant a balete tree.”

My dad looked at me and laughed knowingly. Balete, or banyan trees, are common in the Philippines. Belonging to the fig family, a balete begins life as an epiphyte, growing nonparasitically on another plant, like some species of orchids, which take their nutrients from the surrounding environment and not directly from the host. But despite the similarity, balete trees are far less dainty than orchids—they are massive, bulky, and gnarly.

Growing fifty to sixty metres tall, the diameter of these great trees
could easily extend to ten metres wide. Long, aerial, tentacle-like roots hang from every branch, extending in varying lengths toward one direction—down. When these roots touch the ground, they support the tree and gradually integrate to the main trunk, thereby encircling, entangling, and suffocating the host tree from which they grow, slowly killing it off.

The very notion of overpowering and killing its host is enough to unsettle anyone. But the notoriety as a dwelling for the
dili ingon nato
(“not like us,” in Bisaya) was the very thing that made us wary of this tree. As a kid, Lolo took great lengths to tell us stories about the dili ingon nato that lived in the shadows and crevices atop and behind the long hanging roots of the balete tree. He enraptured our imaginations with
duwende
(dwarves),
diwata
(fairies), and other creatures.

He particularly enjoyed telling us about the towering dark creatures who resembled huge apes and smoked cigars, all the while playing tricks on people, causing them to lose their way. Lolo told us that the tall smoking creatures are called
kapre
and, according to local folklore, they were not always evil. They were capable of friendship and love for women. But as a little girl, that information didn't give me the slightest comfort.

Similar to kapre, the
tikbalang
is also known to lead travelling people astray. A tikbalang, a creature whose head and feet resemble that of a horse and its torso that of a human, lives in trees deep in the forests and mountains.

The only way to find your way when a tikbalang has released its magic is to wear your shirt inside out. To this day, I'm not quite sure how reversing your shirt can thwart off magic, but according to local folklore, it does.

My superstitious grandparents taught us the ways to evade the magic of these supernatural beings. During weekends and summer vacations, my siblings, cousins, and I would play and climb trees from noon to night. Lolo would always warn us to say “
tabi tabi, po
” when walking at night.
Tabi tabi, po
means “please move aside.” Ending the sentence with “po” is typically used when speaking to elders and exhibits the deep respect that needed to be shown to the dili ingon nato. This allowed us to safely pass the creatures that frolicked in the dark and avoid their wrath (which some were very fond of exhibiting).

However, there were evenings when whispering
tabi tabi, po
was not enough to assure ourselves, when my cousins and I were feeling particularly eerie. We avoided the balete tree altogether. Every time we came across one, we would walk at least five feet from the tree and scurry away as fast as our scrawny legs could carry us. One of my cousins used to say that if we came too close, the roots would reach out and pull us inside the tree, where all the dili ingon nato could feast on our little bodies.

My imagination wasn't as gory. To me, the long roots were reminiscent of a heavy curtain hiding the magic that lived inside the balete tree. As a kid, I never had the courage to pull those curtains aside and see what lay behind those roots. My fear was stronger than my curiosity.

Nearing the end of my vacation, I took a walk with my dog and stumbled upon a fully grown balete tree. True to the image in my memory, the tree stood in its immensity—massive and haunting. I hesitated to approach it, as my wild imagination pictured me being wrapped in roots while a myriad of dili ingon nato jumped out of the shadows. Oh, that would've been the end of me!

But before my legs could run in comic speed at the very thought,
I reached out to touch the thick roots that hung from one of the wide-ranging branches and squeezed it.

“This is real,” I thought to myself as I measured the width of my wrist against the width of the root, finding some quantitative way to measure my own reality with the tree. The root was solid to the touch and slightly bigger than my wrist. But despite the connection and the measurement of what was real, I couldn't help but still feel awed by the immensity and life of this tree. After all, it survived my grandfather.

Lolo passed away last year. There was nothing more the doctors could do as the cancer spread and took over his health. His frail body battled for his life as the cancer advanced, slowly but surely—eventually killing its host, my beloved grandfather.

As I walked back, I looked out for signs of smoke atop the balete tree, ensuring that no kapre or tikbalang was sitting on its branch, hoping that none would release its magic and make me lose my way home. Then I realized I had nothing to worry about—I was already home.

       
A
UTHOR
C
OMMENTARY

This piece was written with fondness for both my grandparents. As noted in this story, inspiration arose when I went back to the Philippines and noticed the balete tree that was planted by my grandfather. It was interesting how one object or, in this case, one tree, can open up a chest full of stories. Like opening Pandora's box, my grandparents' superstitious tales of balete trees, tikbalang, diwata, and all other dili ingon nato jumped out at me—waiting to be written. —
Lou Villahermosa, 2015

       
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Born and raised in the Philippines, Lou Villahermosa moved to Canada for her undergraduate degree and now lives in Vancouver. When she isn't working downtown or reading by the beach, she is studying for school to complete her postgraduate degree in intercultural and international communication.

Fiction

It Came to Eat Our Chicken Wings

Ricepaper
8, no. 1 (2002)

Derwin Mak

Her friends thought her uniform looked silly: tight little orange shorts, white tank top with a picture of an owl, shiny beige pantyhose, and white running shoes. Her father wondered what type of restaurant would publish a swimsuit calendar of its waitresses. But despite the raised eyebrows of friends and family, Kyra Ling liked working at Hooters. At least she made more money serving beer and chicken wings than she had pushing a dim sum cart.

However, there were moments when the job seemed distinctly unglamorous, like this moment, when the two college frat boys were lolling their heads, nearly unconscious.

The guy in the Cocoa Beach University golf shirt shook his buddy's shoulder as she passed by. “Hey,” he yelled to Kyra. “My friend thinks Asian girls are hot.”

Kyra smiled. How could she get these two drunks out? “Thanks,” she replied. “Do you guys want a coffee?”

His buddy drooled as he leered at her. “I'm looking for a geisha.”

Kyra shrugged. “Go to Japan.”

The student was unfazed. “So do you speak Asian?”

Kyra's lips curled into a bemused grin.

“
Non, mais je parle anglais, français, et un peu de chinois
,” she replied.

The student didn't give up. “So can you teach it to me? It's one
of those languages that's best taught by a …” he mumbled before he slumped over the table.

Kyra tapped him on the shoulder.

“I think you're done.” She handed the cheque to his friend. “Here's the tab.”

“Oh, sure,” the frat boy said as he handed her a fifty dollar bill.

Kyra took the money and pushed the change into his shirt pocket. “We better get you into a cab. Don't drive, okay?”

“Sure thing,” he muttered.

Kyra motioned to Maria, the manager. They walked the two frat boys out the door and into a cab. When they returned into the restaurant, the regular customers burst into applause. Kyra curtsied to the audience.

Maria laughed. “That was great. You should negotiate the Middle East peace treaty.”

“Get out,” Kyra teased. “Did you hear those two morons? ‘I'm looking for a geisha.' I bet he doesn't know what a geisha really is. Is that all these guys think about when they see an Asian woman?”

“You, Kyra dear, can be a lot of things,” Maria suggested as she gave a bag of chicken wings to her. “You and Nicole can munch on these. Brandy called in sick, and Nicole's at the car show alone, so you can stay there and work at the booth.”

“Cool, my first promo.” Kyra retouched her lipstick. “How do I look?”

“You look fabulous. Don't keep fussing. It's only a promo, not a calendar shoot,” Maria reminded her. “Actually, it can be fun. Come on, get going, or you'll be late.”

Kyra hopped into her red convertible, threw the bag of chicken wings into the backseat, and drove onto the highways around Cocoa Beach, Florida. With clear weather and no traffic jams, she should
be at the convention centre in no time.

Then she saw a bright light in the sky. A shiny, silvery object, engulfed in red flames, was falling to the Earth.

“Oh my God, is that a crashing plane?” she wondered. The object plummeted steadily until it disappeared into the horizon. The sound of a crash boomed in the distance. Curious about the object, she sped ahead.

A mile later, she stopped her car, walked on to the side of the road, and looked at a nearby swamp, her eyes widening with awe. A cylinder, like a grain silo about thirty feet long, lay at the edge of the swamp. Its silver surface was charred black in spots, and it had a few dents and creases, but it seemed mostly undamaged. Steam rose from the water surrounding the cylinder, but the fire was out.

She looked up and scanned the sky. It was blue and cloudless, quiet and peaceful. No storm or hurricane had brought this thing down.

Lowering her gaze back to Earth, she looked at the swamp again. She stood still for a long time, staring at the shiny, steaming cylinder.

A vehicle screeched to a halt behind her. She spun around and saw a
NASA
van beside her car. Workers holding cameras and equipment jumped out of the van, ran into the swamp, and waded towards the object.

“What is it?” she asked a man whose badge read: John Evans. Recovery Team Leader.

“I don't know,” Evans admitted. “It doesn't look like one of ours or a Russian or a Chinese or any other country's.”

“It doesn't have any markings,” a recovery worker yelled from the swamp. Evans gasped.

“Darn, maybe it's somebody's secret weapon! Get out of there!”

“It's okay, it's okay,” the recovery worker reported. “Nothing—no
radiation, no biological or chemical contaminant—is registering on our equipment.”

“It was on fire on the way down,” Kyra observed.

“That was probably the surface burning as it entered our atmosphere,” said Evans. “Thank goodness it fell in the water. If it had fallen on trees or grass, the whole countryside could be on fire now.”

He pulled out his notebook and glanced at Kyra's Hooters name badge. “Uh, Kyra? May I ask you some questions? Did you see the spacecraft come down?”

The spacecraft. The
NASA
guy had called it a spacecraft. But it wasn't from any country in the world. “Maybe it was from beyond this world,” thought Kyra.

She told him about the fire in the sky, the spaceship's constant speed of descent, and the sound of the crash.

Then she remembered the chicken wings in the backseat of her car. “Oh dear, the car show,” she muttered. “I am so late for the car show. And I have chicken wings for Nicole. Can I go now?”

“Sure, and thank you,” said Evans.

Kyra smiled, ran back to her car, and drove off. A few minutes later, a recovery worker pointed out the open hatch to Evans. “Someone was flying this ship,” Evans guessed as he looked into the ship. “There's no one inside the ship. Where's the astronaut?” he asked. Nobody knew.

“Hey, look at this,” cried Dr Steve Potter, the biologist.

Evans walked back to the side of the road. Potter led him along a streak of blue liquid that stretched from the swamp to a stand of trees, to a pair of tire tracks in the mud. The tire tracks were where Kyra had parked her car.

“What could that be?” asked Evans. “Mechanical fluid from the spacecraft?” Potter shrugged. “I dunno. I'll take a sample back and analyze it.”

“Whatever it is, someone dripped it on a path from the swamp to the Hooters Girl's car,” said Evans. “I hope she's not taking more than chicken wings to the car show.”

“You're late,” Nicole complained. She moved away from the racing car emblazoned with the orange and white Hooters logo on its hood. “What took you so long?”

“I saw a spaceship crash beside the highway,” Kyra squealed. “It was so exciting. I think it was alien.”

“As if,” Nicole replied. She pointed at a stack of posters of the contestants of the Miss Hooters of East Central Florida bikini pageant. “Come on, help me hand out posters to horny car show fans.”

Nicole sat down and began autographing the posters, which showed her flipping her blonde hair while posing in a pink bikini. She signed each poster, “Breast wishes, Nicole XOXO,” before handing it with a smile to the next guy in a lineup of car aficionados.

As Kyra passed another poster to Nicole, a teenager asked her, “Are you in the poster too?”

“No,” said Kyra. “But I'm on the coupon for ten free chicken wings.” She handed a coupon to him. “Do you want one?”

“Awesome,” said the kid. “Uh, can you sign it?”

Kyra signed it “Hugs and hooters, Kyra” and gave it back to the teenager. As he walked off, she turned to Nicole. “Don't you love it when you can make the day of a fifteen-year-old kid because he's seen a Hooters Girl?”

Nicole laughed. “Sure, love it. Hey, I think those guys want to take a photo of us.”

The car show promo continued: handing out posters, posing for photos, and selling the swimsuit calendar. A newspaper photographer took a photo of Kyra reclining on the hood of the Hooters racing car.

During a lull in the show, Kyra began eating the chicken wings. “So, Nicole, are you going to continue your modelling?”

“Oh, yes,” said Nicole as she reached for a wing. “I did a shoot for a travel magazine: Clothes for Hiking in Theme Parks.”

“That's great!”

“And what about you? Still thinking of the State Department?”

“Yep. I figure when I get a degree in languages, I can get a job as an interpreter. Who knows, I might even get to work in an embassy in some place like Paris or London.”

“Our little Kyra, in the diplomatic corps, talking to foreign VIPs,” mused Nicole. “You can do it, girl.”

Potter held the beaker of blue liquid up to the light. “Interesting stuff.”

“What is it?” Evans asked.

“It's not mechanical fluid, that's for sure,” said Potter. “It's biological; it has DNA.”

“It has DNA? You mean it's from somebody's body?”

“Not somebody. Something. It has amino acids, but it's not human. I think it's something's blood.”

“Blood? What animal on Earth has blue blood?”

Potter hummed. “Perhaps it's not from Earth.”

Kyra and Nicole couldn't help but notice the babbling in the exhibit hall had suddenly grown louder.

“What's going on?” asked Kyra, staring at the crowd forming near the vintage Mustangs.

Suddenly, a creature stomped out from the crowd. Bellowing like an elephant, it waved its arms around. It walked upright on two legs and was the size of a man, but it wasn't human; it was a green reptile wearing a torn silver spacesuit. Its bulging eyes looked around.

“What's he trying to promote?” Nicole wondered.

“I don't think he's advertising anything. I think it's an alien, the outer space type,” said Kyra. “But it seems harmless, like an overgrown iguana.”

“Hey, look, I think it's bleeding blue blood,” Nicole observed. “That spot on its upper arm.”

“Godzilla! Godzilla!” a boy shouted. Squealing with delight, he ran to the alien, threw his arms around it, and hugged it. As he jumped up and down excitedly, he hit the alien's bleeding wound.

The alien growled and quickly pushed the boy away. Seconds later, jets of flames burst forth from the alien's head, arms, and parts not covered by the torn spacesuit.

Screams of panic filled the air. As people stampeded past them, Kyra and Nicole watched the alien run from car to car.

“There's gas and oil in those cars,” Nicole realized.

“He could blow up the place,” Kyra said excitedly. “We have to stop it, but how?” She saw a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. “Why don't we use the fire extinguisher?”

“Good idea, but look at the thing,” Nicole said as they pulled the fire extinguisher from the wall. “It's running around. How do we make it stay still long enough to spray it?”

Kyra glanced at the alien. “I've got an idea. I'll get its attention, and when it's standing still, you sneak up behind it and spray it.”

“It's a plan,” Nicole agreed.

Kyra poured the rest of the chicken wings onto a tray. Swaying her hips, she strutted up to the alien. “Hey, have you eaten yet?” she cooed the traditional Chinese greeting in Cantonese.

The alien stood still, looked down at Kyra, and reached for a wing. Kyra flinched as she felt the heat from the flames, but she held out the tray and smiled.

Still on fire, the alien began devouring the chicken wings, bones and all. Kyra kept smiling; in the corner of her eye, she could see Nicole sneaking up with the fire extinguisher. Without any warning, she blasted foam all over it, putting out the flames.

The alien roared, turned around, and threw foam on Nicole, then on Kyra.

Kyra brushed it off her hair. “You can have all the chicken wings you want, but you've gotta show some table manners!” she scolded.

The alien looked down at her and said, “Okay.”

Kyra's eyes widened in surprise. “You speak English?”

Fifteen minutes later,
NASA
scientists and police officers stormed into the convention centre. The place looked empty, as the crowds had run away in panic.

“We heard there was a monster,” shouted a police officer. “Where is it? Is anybody here?”

“We're over here,” came a reply from the Hooters booth.

They went to the Hooters booth and found the big iguana eating chicken wings as the two Hooters Girls watched.

The police officers drew their pistols and pointed them at the alien. Kyra waved her hand at the guns dismissively. “Guys, you don't need the guns,” she said. “We've negotiated an interstellar ceasefire here.”

“A first-contact situation,” Potter marvelled. “You're obviously feeding it. Does it need anything else from us?”

“Yes, he does,” Kyra said. “Can you give this guy a lift back to his spaceship?”

The alien ship, a little dented and charred from its trip to Earth, blasted off from Kennedy Space Center. Kyra, Nicole, Evans, and Potter watched the ship disappear into the sky.

“Our first contact with an alien species, and it came here to eat our chicken wings,” Evans said, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”

“It's actually quite believable,” said Kyra. “Our TV transmissions have been going into space for years. He saw our commercial and decided to drop in and try our wings.”

“And thus American consumerism paved the way for interstellar diplomacy,” Nicole added.

“An amazing species,” Potter remarked. “Even on its own world, it's the only species that can inflame itself to protect a wound from infection.”

Kyra nodded. “Its fire wasn't intended to hurt us. It was intended to heal that nasty cut he got when his spaceship landed.”