America Is in the Heart

by Carlos Bulosan

  A nut sold for five centavos, so I usually made one peso a day climbing the tall trees from six to six. I would give the money to my mother, who was now recuperating in bed with the new baby.

  “What is her name?” I asked.

  “Francisca, son,” said my mother.

  I had a sister again.

  * * *

  —

  At last the day for paying the installment was drawing near. I tried to climb the coconut trees faster, hoping to have a greater share. I was naked to the waist. But one afternoon, when I was working unusually late, I fell from the top of a tree.

  I was carried off to our house. When I woke up my mother was crying. One leg and one arm were broken.

  “Be brave, Allos,” said my mother.

  A week afterward my father came to town with the cart filled with straw. He put me on the warm straw and drove to an albolario, or chiropractor, on the other side of town. The man was a primitive doctor, little better than a witch doctor. He burned many leaves of trees and rubbed the ashes mixed with oil over my body, uttering unintelligible incantations and dancing mysteriously around me. His face was deeply stained with some kind of juice. His hands were rough working hands, but gentle and kind to my body. They crept over my leg smoothly and soothingly, pressing and rubbing gently.

  “There you are, son,” he said when he was through. “Come and see me when you can walk again.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He patted my legs with his gentle hands. My father gave him three chickens and a sack of fresh tomatoes. They carried me back to the cart.

  “Good-bye and good luck,” said the albolario.

  I knew that I would get well and walk back to his house. There was something about him that made me feel sure. My bones began to knit together and in two months I was able to move my arm and leg. I looked forward to the day when I could visit the old man.

  One day my brother Macario told me that when I got well he would take me to school. He sat with me near the lamplight and read the Old Testament. He read the story of a man named Moses who delivered his persecuted people to safety in another land.

  “When did this tragedy happen?” I asked.

  “A long time ago,” he said.

  “Who was Moses?”

  “He was a wise Jew. His moral code was obeyed by his people for centuries.”

  “Do we have a man like him in our country?”

  “Yes, Allos,” he said. “His name is José Rizal.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The cruel Spanish rulers killed him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was the leader of our people.”

  “I would like to know more about Rizal,” I said.

  “You don’t realize what it is to be like Rizal,” Macario said, looking curiously at me.

  “I would like to fight for you, our parents, my brothers and sister.”

  “You will suffer,” Macario said.

  “I am not afraid,” I said.

  “You will know more about him someday,” said my brother, going back to the Old Testament and reading solemnly.

  It filled me with wonder as he explained the significance of the great men who had died for their persecuted peoples centuries ago. But now he had to go away. We could not read any more in the lamplight, could not travel through history into other lands and times.

  Macario would be allowed to teach again without marrying the strange girl provided he would go to Mindanao.

  “Where is Mindanao?” I asked.

  “It is in the south, but not so far away,” said my brother.

  “Are you afraid to go?” I asked.

  “I will be brave like you, Allos,” he said. “And maybe when you grow up, I will ask you to visit me.”

  “I will come,” I said.

  “Good-bye, little brother,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  Mindanao was a dangerous land because the native Moros still resented the presence of Christians. They were Mohammedans, although their religion was already fast disintegrating. The faith had been brought by the mercenary Moors from Spain through India during the eleventh century. The Moors at that time were at the height of their power and glory, having conquered all the Christian lands in Europe and Asia. They had ransacked and pillaged all the civilized countries of the world as far as the Euphrates River, following the trail of another insatiable conqueror and vandal before them, Alexander the Great, who was alleged to have reached Mindanao in search of fine horses and gold.

  When the Spaniards discovered the Philippines in the later part of the fourteenth century, war with the Moros began and continued for centuries. It was both a religious and an economic war, for in those early days of global vandalism the sword and the cross went together. But foreign aggression only made the Mohammedan Moros more ardent defenders of their faith and their land, and even the Christian Filipinos became their enemies when they attempted to impose their customs and laws.

  When Macario went to teach in Mindanao, the Moros had not been entirely pacified. But some of their young men and women were already absorbing Christian ideals and modes of living. In fact, the better families were sending their children to America for a liberal education. The sudden contact of the Moros with Christianity and with American ideals was actually the liberation of their potentialities as a people and the discovery of the natural wealth of their land.

  My brother Macario sent his monthly earnings from Mindanao to my mother so that we could pay the installment on our land. Then suddenly he stopped writing and sending money. We had one more payment to make.

  That year a new presidente, or mayor, was elected and all the employees in the presidencia and public market were thrown out of office. It was always like that in Binalonan. When a new presidente was elected all the old employees, unless they supported him, were dismissed, and immediately his own family, relatives, and supporters were employed.

  My brother Amado, who was a ticket collector at the public market, was also dismissed. He tried to look for a job in the local dance hall, where the businessmen and teachers found pleasure. But there was no opening for him, so he worked his way on a ship to America.

  It was the last time that I saw Amado in the Philippines. Immediately afterward Macario wrote from Manila that he had not been teaching for some time. The strange girl had followed him to Mindanao, and he had escaped to Manila. Now he too was contemplating going to America.

  My father knew then that it was the end of our family. He was not sure where to get the last payment for our land, because the rice was only a foot high and it would be at least five months before it could be harvested. The last payment was only two months off and none of our family was earning any money. And my mother was big with child again.

  I limped to school every day carrying my boiled rice and salted fish. I walked three miles to the schoolhouse. When I went home in the afternoon people looked out of their houses and pointed at me.

  “Look at that Igorot boy,” they said. “He is going to school with his long hair. Hey, Igorot!”

  I did not listen to them. I was too absorbed with my book. The other children taunted me in the school yard and threw stones at me, laughing at my long hair and bare feet. I sat attentively in the classroom, listening eagerly to my teacher. I knew that my schooldays would not last long. I tried to learn everything I could in a short time, because I knew I would soon have to stop and go back to work.

  CHAPTER VII

  Then the heavy rains came and my legs began to swell, preventing me from going to school. I stayed in the house wondering what would happen to me. But when I began to recover, Francisca played with me. Like my baby sister, I crawled on the floor to the window and watched the boys and girls of my age going to school. Sometimes a boy on his way home would stop beneath the window and r
ead aloud to me. Sometimes a girl would come to the house and teach me how to sing.

  One afternoon my mother came home from the public market and found me crying silently.

  “What is it, Allos?” she asked.

  “I would like to continue going to school,” I said.

  There was a puzzled look in her eyes. “You will go as soon as your sister is big enough to be alone in the house,” she said.

  I showed my teeth and smiled. “I will wait, Mother,” I said.

  “That is a good boy,” she said.

  But I did not get well for a long time. There were days when my legs were reduced to normal size, but there were also days when they were abnormally large. I thought I would never walk on my feet again.

  My father no longer came to town because the last installment on our land was past due. Although he felt that the moneylender would not be too drastic with us, he had hired himself out to some farmers in the village. He earned fifty centavos a day, digging in the muddy fields with antiquated implements. But it was the only work he knew, the only work available, and he could earn a little money on which to hang his hope.

  At this time my brother Luciano, the soldier, came home to live with us. He had just completed his three-year service in the Philippine Scouts, and was honorably discharged. He had contracted a serious lung disease while he was in service. The army sent him home with the idea that in a few months he would receive some kind of monthly pension from the United States government.

  Luciano was twenty years old, but he looked younger because of his pale face. He had joined the army at seventeen, but before that he had been an agent for one of the large sugar companies in Manila. He had recruited workers from the dispossessed peasant provinces in northern Luzon, passing through Binalonan with truckloads of men and women on their way to the great sugar cane plantations in the south. He had stopped now and then at our house, but I was then living with my father on the farm. I first saw Luciano when he came home from the army, sick and tired and disillusioned.

  He bought a small soldier’s cap and gave it to me, but it was stolen by one of the boys in the neighborhood. My brother carried me in his arms and we went from house to house, asking about my cap. He was in uniform and when the peasants saw him, they whipped their boys mercilessly until they revealed who had stolen my cap.

  Luciano was a young man of wide experience. He was one of two men in the town who could operate a typewriter, and so was needed at the presidencia. He was also the first to know about machines—automobiles and motorcycles—when these first came to Binalonan. There were many important things he could do that few of the townspeople knew.

  While I was still unable to walk out of the house, Luciano used to go to the grassy river with horsehair snares. He would entwine two thick strands together and loop them to about the size of a peso; attaching the twines to the sturdy talahib stem, he would plant them under the bushes in the river bottom.

  “The birds will go to the river at noon for a drink of water,” he would explain to me, “so I put the snares in their sibbang, or trail, and they will go through the loops without knowing it. Their eyes are very weak in the sunlight.”

  “I would like to see you plant the snares,” I said.

  “You must get well and I will show you how to catch birds without hurting them,” he said.

  One afternoon Luciano brought a sibbed, or crying bird, and tied it to the table in the living room. It was a beautiful bird, but it cried all the time. My sister Francisca played with it, but the bird would not eat anything.

  “It is dying of starvation,” I said.

  “It is your bird, Allos,” said my brother. “You must keep it alive.”

  I hobbled about the sibbed and tried to feed it with corn. It looked me straight in the eye and cried, filling the house with its mournful nocturnal noise. I caught it in my arms and held it in the light.

  “Why is it crying, brother?” I asked.

  “It has lost something precious, I guess,” said my brother, stroking the bird gently, his eyes far away. “Maybe a wife and some little sibbed. Wouldn’t you cry if you had lost something dear to you?”

  “I would,” I said. “I would cry until I died.”

  Francisca started laughing and pushing the bird toward the wall. She could not understand why it would not eat. The bird crouched in a corner and looked at my sister, crying and bowing to the floor as though it were a human being in mourning.

  “It is about to die,” I said.

  “You must try to make it live, Allos,” said my brother. “The bird is healthy and strong outside, but something is eating it inside. Its heart is bleeding, Allos.”

  I tried to make the bird live. I blew my breath into its delicate throat, cooing soft words to it. But nothing helped.

  When the bird died no word could console me. My brother carried me in his arms to the river and let me watch him contrive the snares under the bushes. I would hang on his neck and watch his hands expertly push the thin blades of grass, putting the snares in place and patting the soft sand under them.

  After we had planted all the snares we would go to the shade of a camatchile tree. My brother would climb the tree and throw the choicest fruits to me. The taste was bitter, but we liked it. Sometimes we went farther up the river and bathed in the deep pool. Luciano would place me on the edge of the pool and rub my legs slowly with red clay; then holding me gently in his arms, he would dive into the water and spring up for air when he knew that I needed it.

  At sundown we rounded up our snares. Some birds struggled violently and the snares tightened sharply around their necks and they died. Some stood placidly and waited for us to catch them. My brother held them with one hand and I with the other. I put my arms around his neck and hung on his back. Then we went home slowly, shouting at the village dogs that tried to leap at our birds.

  * * *

  —

  While it was customary among the peasants to eat birds, my brother never allowed us to eat the ones we caught. We never thought of killing them, but considered them part of our family. They became tame, and ate with us like children. They walked freely in the house, running to safety when a stranger came to visit us.

  I remember this was the most pleasant period of my life. My father had taught me to be kind to animals because they were useful on the farm, and from him I had learned to deal with our carabaos as though they were human beings. I used to sleep on the back of our favorite carabao when I was a herd boy in the village; when I fell on the ground the animal would crop the grass around me until I awakened. My brother Leon had taught me to be few of words and to stick to my convictions. He had also taught me to love the earth. Amado, because he had had no chance to go further, had taught me how important it was for a man to study. He who had so little education knew how necessary it was to go into the world with a good education. And Macario, who was torn by inner conflicts, had widened my mental horizon by telling me about the lives of other men in faraway lands.

  But Luciano did not have to go away to show me the beauty of the world. We went to the river and snared birds and brought them home. We did not catch them for their usefulness, but for the esthetic pleasure we found in observing them. I had the rare opportunity of watching them in their various moods. My education with Luciano was very useful to me when I was thrown into the world of men, when all that I held beautiful was to be touched with ugliness. Perhaps it was this wonderful interlude with my brother that finally led me to an appreciation of beauty—that drove me with a burning desire to find beauty and goodness in the world.

  The rarest bird in our part of the Philippines was the parrot. It was a small, gray and red-breasted bird, with a melodious voice. It was Luciano who introduced tamed parrots to our town. He built a small cage and covered it with horsehair snares. He put a quail in the cage and hung it on the highest branch of the santol tree in our yard. The cage
was connected to one of the windows of our house with a long string that we had made from maguey fibers.

  The quail was not the best decoy for a parrot, but it was the smallest bird we had in the house. A parrot appeared and when it noticed the quail, it flew from one limb to another until it was close to the cage. It stopped and peeked around the tiny bars, singing rapturously to the quail. It jumped on the roof of the cage, where the snares were thick. Its neck was caught by several loops. It struggled violently only to be caught by the legs. My brother lowered the cage to the ground, and we rushed outside to look at the parrot.

  “It is our first parrot, Allos,” said my brother. “But we will catch others when they come to the tree.”

  “I like it,” I said. “It is a very brave bird.”

  “It is in love with the quail,” said my brother. “When you are in love you are brave. You are not afraid of death.”

  “Do you think it knew that there was danger in the cage?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” said my brother. “Birds are like human beings. They have a strong sense of death. And of life. Now let us go to the house and feed it with bananas.”

  We tamed the parrot and put it in another cage, but it looked sullenly at us. After a while we hung the cage outside one of our windows and it began to sing; then we put it in a strong cage and used it for a decoy. We caught many parrots after that and sold them. When we had saved enough to start a little store, Luciano went to town and borrowed some building implements. He found a suitable spot by the overland highway that had become popular with American and European tourists. They passed through Binalonan on their way to Baguio, stopping only for water and food and to take pictures of the natives.