America Is in the Heart

by Carlos Bulosan

I tried hard to remain aloof from the destruction and decay around me. I wanted to remain pure within myself. But in Pismo Beach, where I found Mariano, I could not fight any more. He and I slept on the floor of a small cottage, where two others were living. It was used by prostitutes when summer came and the farm workers were in town with money. When our companions woke up in the morning, Mariano and I rushed to the small bed and slept all day, waking up only at night when the gambling houses opened. I would walk among the gamblers hoping they would give me a few coins when they won.

  Throughout the winter and far into spring, I lived in this cabin with my companions. When I was hungry I went to the chop suey house in our block. I would sit with gamblers and when the waiter came with a pot of hot tea and rice cakes, I would drink four or five cups and put the cakes in my pockets. Then my hunger was appeased, and I could talk again. I almost lost my power of speech, because when I was hungry the words would not come; when I tried to speak only tears flowed from my eyes.

  One night, when the Korean woman who owned the restaurant saw me looking hungrily at some half-emptied plates left by white customers, she said: “When you are hungry, come here and eat. This is your home.”

  When I went to the kitchen to wash dishes to pay for my food, the woman threw her hands up and said: “That is enough! Go home! Come again!”

  I went again and again. But I had no home that winter. One of my companions died of tuberculosis, so Mariano burned the cabin and left town. The nights were cold. Once in a while I could hear church bells ringing, and I would say to myself: “If you can listen long enough to those bells you will be safe. Try to listen again and be patient.” They were my only consolation, those bells. And I listened patiently, and that spring came with a green hope.

  * * *

  —

  I went to Seattle to wait for the fishing season in Alaska. There seemed no other place in this wide land to go; there seemed to be tragedy and horror everywhere I went. Where would I go from here? What year was it when I had landed in Seattle with a bright dream? I was walking on Jackson Street when I suddenly came upon Julio, who had disappeared in Sunnyside after the riot in Moxee City.

  I went with Julio to a Japanese gambling house on King Street, where he taught me how to play a game called Pi-Q. I watched him play, learning his tricks. Before the gambling houses opened, we sat in his room for hours playing Pi-Q. Julio was very patient and kind.

  “Gambling is an art,” he said to me. “Some people gamble because they think there is money in it. Yes, there is money in it when you are lucky. But then the meaning of gambling is distorted, no longer an art. You could win ten dollars a day all your life, and make an art of gambling, if you would only try. I am an artist.”

  When Julio had perfected the art of gambling, he turned to picking pockets. I watched him practicing for hours. He would put a silver dollar on the edge of the table and walk toward it, snatching the dollar swiftly as he passed. Then he would use a fifty-cent piece, a quarter, and finally a dime. When he could snatch a ten-cent piece without dropping it, he mingled among the people in the streets and practiced a new art.

  I followed him. How swift and nimble he was! Once, in a department store, he was almost caught. I hurried past him whispering in my dialect that he was being watched. His room was filled with inexpensive trinkets.

  “Why don’t you sell it and use the money for something good?” I said.

  “You are distorting the art of picking pockets again,” he said. “My ‘pickings’ are works of art. I use them for artistic expression only.”

  His “pickings” were neatly arranged on the table, on the floor; and some of the cheap wrist watches were hanging on the bed posts. I thought I had understood Julio when we walked across the Rattlesnake Mountains. But I was wrong. He was again a new personality, shaped by a new environment. I felt that I should leave him. I was angry that the old Julio was lost, for he had given me something, a kind of philosophy, which had sustained me for a long time.

  “I’m going away,” I said. “I want to work—anything but gambling. Or picking pockets.”

  “You are a damn fool!” he shouted. Then suddenly, realizing that he had made a mistake, he said: “There is no work anywhere. Why don’t you go to the gambling houses and wait for the hop-picking in Spokane?”

  It seemed a good idea. I went to a Chinese gambling house and started playing at a Pi-Q table. At night, when the place was crowded, I stopped playing and sat by a table. I noticed a Filipino farm worker, an elderly man, who was playing heavily at one of the tables. He left when he had lost all his money. Then he came back with a gun and began shooting at the Chinese dealers.

  There was a general scramble, and I ducked behind a table that had fallen on the floor. I was terrified but managed to gather a handful of bills, crept to the back door, and rolled down the stairs. I ran frantically to the street, in front of the gambling house.

  The Filipino had gone completely crazy. He was running up and down the sidewalk with a long knife, stabbing everyone in his way. The people ran for their lives. But for some it was too late. He had killed eight and wounded sixteen before the policemen caught him.

  I lost track of Julio. But I was glad, when I took the freight train for Portland, of the things he had taught me before he disappeared. Word of the incident in Seattle had reached Portland before I arrived, and all the gambling houses were closed. I took another train to Sacramento where a Filipino mass meeting was being held. I skirted the crowd and took a bus for San Bernardino, where Chinese gambling houses were open to Filipinos.

  I lost almost all my money. I stayed on for another day, but on the fourth day I gave up hope. I had only fifteen cents left. At night, when the gambling houses closed, I went to a Filipino poolroom and slept on a pool table, which was warmer and softer than the hard benches along the walls. But it was not the first time, for I had slept on pool tables in Santa Barbara, before Alfredo had appeared with plenty of money.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, desperate and hungry, I sat in front of a gambling house hoping to try my luck with my fifteen cents when the place opened. I did not go in right away, but killed time talking to the other gamblers. Three hours before closing time, I started playing and went on until the place was closed. I was jubilant. I had won nearly five hundred dollars!

  “Now,” I said to myself, “this is the life for me in America.”

  I took the bus for Los Angeles. No more freight trains for me. They were only for hoboes. I called up my brother Macario from the station, but he had left his job. I did not know where Amado lived, so I took a train for San Diego hoping to gamble there for a week.

  It was twilight when I arrived in San Diego. I rented a room at the U. S. Grant Hotel. It was a new life. No more sleeping in poolrooms and going hungry. No more fear of want.

  It was Sunday and the gambling houses were closed until Monday. I took a ferry boat to Coronado, a small island off the bay. When I returned to the ferry station the boats had stopped running for the night. I walked back to town and tried to get a room, but all the hotels refused me.

  I went to the ferry station and slept on a bench. The following morning I took a streetcar to Coronado where, in a drugstore fountain, I was refused service. One young girl, who was a student, told me that there was a Filipino clubhouse on the island.

  I went to the clubhouse. Frank opened the door, and it was a happy reunion. I thought that he had gone to Chicago when we parted in Utah. He was now a photographer. He was living with fifteen other Filipinos, mostly hotel and restaurant helpers. He took me to the kitchen where some of the men were playing Pi-Q.

  I took my place by the table, pulling my hat down over my face. I wanted to win their money: it did not matter to me whether they were laboring men or not. I had to play with them, and cheat them, when I had the chance. Cheating was an imperative of the game.

 
The men went to work reluctantly, one at a time, and came hurrying back to the table, throwing their wages on it. I cheated them flagrantly because they were poor players, laughing aloud and kidding them while I won. But I was afraid of this bunch of work-worn, fear-stricken men. I knew that they were capable of violence, unlike professional gamblers who, upon discovering that you are one of them, lose a few more dollars and leave the table. I had discovered that there was fraternity among professional gamblers; when one was destitute, others are ready to give him a hand.

  In the afternoon, when all the men came back, I won all their money. They became quarrelsome. Frank told me that one of the men had a wife who was in a hospital. But the man was shy and full of pride, and I knew I could not do anything for him. Why did he gamble his money when his wife needed it? Did he think he had the right to marry when he was scrubbing floors for thirty-five dollars a month? To hell with him!

  So I was becoming hard, and brutal too: and careless with my talk. I went to San Diego and played in Chinatown. But I could not forget the man whose wife was in a hospital. I kept seeing his face on the gaming table, forlorn and pitiful. I played without direction, angry with myself. And I began to lose.

  The next morning I went to Coronado. On my way to the Filipino clubhouse, I bought fifty dollars’ worth of groceries for the men. They were all in when I arrived; some were dancing with their girls, and a man was playing a guitar. I gave the groceries to Frank and went out to buy some whisky. When I returned Frank was cooking a meal.

  The men started playing Pi-Q in the kitchen. I sat at the table and purposely lost one hundred dollars, the remainder of the money I had won from them. I stopped playing and joined the dancers in the living room. A young Mexican girl dragged me to the floor. I began dancing with her, feeling the warmth of her body close to mine.

  “My name is Carmen,” she said. “What is yours?”

  I told her.

  “Let’s go to my room,” she whispered.

  “All right.” The blood was pounding in my temple. “I will follow you.”

  Her lips were hot upon mine when Frank came into the room, stopped at the door, then sat weakly on the bed.

  “This is my room,” he said. “We have very little memories in America,” he said, looking at the girl with sad eyes. He crossed the room and opened a drawer, bringing out a girl’s diaphanous gown. “I got this for a girl years ago. I promised to keep it for her always. But she said that if I ever found one I could like—” he looked at Carmen sadly—“it would be all right with her. Will you try it on, Carmen?”

  Gentle and loving he was, helping Carmen on with the gown, kneeling on the floor around her and smoothing it to her body. Then it came to me that I would never again hurt Frank, or Carmen; that if I felt like hurting someone, it would be those men and women who had driven Frank to the floor, kneeling by an unfaithful girl.

  I left the room quietly. I stayed on in San Diego and gambled. When I had a stroke of luck, I transferred to the El Cortes Hotel. I sent a postal money order to myself and went to San Francisco, but the city was dead. The gambling houses were closed. I stayed in Chinatown, and walked up and down Market Street. Once, in a cheap rooming house, I met a Filipino who was struggling to become an artist. I gave him some money, and left for Stockton.

  * * *

  —

  It was again the asparagus season and the farm workers were itching to lose their money. But I hated to gamble in the Chinese houses. I went to Walnut Grove, thirty miles away, where the Japanese controlled the gambling. I stopped playing when I had only five dollars left.

  At noon the following day, I played again and made twenty-five dollars. I went to Stockton hoping to find Claro, but his restaurant was closed. I became restless and went to the bus station and bought a ticket to San Luis Obispo.

  I felt that it was the end of another period of my life. I could see it in my reaction to the passing landscape, in my compassion for the workers in the fields. It was the end of a strange flight.

  I bought a bottle of wine when I arrived in San Luis Obispo. I rented a room in a Japanese hotel and started a letter to my brother Macario, whose address had been given to me by a friend. Then it came to me, like a revelation, that I could actually write understandable English. I was seized with happiness. I wrote slowly and boldly, drinking the wine when I stopped, laughing silently and crying. When the long letter was finished, a letter which was actually a story of my life, I jumped to my feet and shouted through my tears:

  “They can’t silence me any more! I’ll tell the world what they have done to me!”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  I went to bed resolved to change the whole course of my life forever. Where was I to begin? Where did rootless men begin their lives? Who were the men that contributed something positive to society? Show me the books about them! I would read them all! I would educate myself to be like them!

  In the morning, rising to the clouds with my dream, I walked out of the hotel a new man. My first impulse was to walk past the house where Max’s wife lived. I had seen it only once years ago, and I had a difficult time locating it. I remembered Max running toward me with the gun in his hand. I stopped when the memory of that day became too vivid in my imagination.

  At last I found the house. It was a small house, with a wide yard. I went to the door and knocked, not really knowing why. The door opened and a tall, thin, white woman with gray hair showed her face.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” I said wondering if she were Max’s wife.

  “Come on in,” she said quickly.

  I followed her into the living room, sat on a couch, and fumbled for my hat. This was a new experience. Who was she? I saw a bedroom door. That must be the place where Max shot the white man, I thought. I edged toward the door. My life of fear and flight had taught me to seek the nearest exit.

  The woman came back to the living room with a tall glass of port wine. “Do you drink in the morning?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  She gave me the glass and filled another for herself. A man stirred in one of the bedrooms.

  “Who is that, honey?” he asked.

  “We have a visitor,” she said. “It’s a little Pinoy who looks like a rabbit.” She looked at me, smiling. “My husband is a Filipino. We edit a small newspaper. We have two other Pinoys with us. Where did you come from and what is your name?”

  “My real name is Allos,” I said. “But my friends call me Carlos.”

  “Now we will call you Carl,” she said, pouring more wine into my glass. “You don’t look like a farm worker. What have you been doing?”

  “I have been at many things,” I answered. “I am a gambler now; that is, I was yesterday.”

  The bedroom door opened and her husband came into the living room. He limped badly as he came toward me.

  “My name is Pascual,” he said. “I hope my wife didn’t get you drunk at this time of day.”

  The woman laughed. “Now, honey,” she said, “I was only trying to entertain him. Don’t you like to drink with me, Carl?”

  Suddenly José and Gazamen came into the living room.

  “Carlos! Carlos!” They reached for my hand.

  “It has been a long time,” José said. “I thought I would never see you again after the accident in Bakersfield!”

  “Do you know this little rabbit?” the woman asked.

  “He saved my life,” José said, reaching for the bottle of wine on the table. “Here’s to a new life, Carlos!”

  Pascual said: “Good! That’s good! We can all work together! Do you know how to write your name?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Pascual produced his brief case and gave it to me. “From now on don’t part with it, unless you part with your life.”

  I could not find words to express my joy. Here was the answer to my confusion. Pas
cual was a socialist. He was a lawyer by profession, but his talent had found a fuller expression in writing. He was small and semi-paralytic, but versatile and fiery. He had brought his American wife from Chicago to California—a woman almost twice as tall as he. Together they had started a newspaper in Stockton, appealed to the farm workers, prospered, until a rival newspaper drove them to the Santa Maria Valley. Then they had gone to San Luis Obispo where, at that time, the Filipino agricultural workers were voiceless and treated like peons. The agricultural workers were beginning to ask for unity, but had been barred from established unions. The Filipino workers started an independent union, and José was one of its organizers. I was happy to work with him, too. And happy also to know that in this feudalistic town the social awakening of Filipinos in California was taking shape.

  * * *

  —

  I carried Pascual’s brief case from store to store, listening to him talk to the storekeepers. The responsibilities of a Filipino editor were enormous: besides editing and soliciting advertisements, he also distributed the paper and campaigned for subscriptions. I was learning fast, and remembering, and soon I tried writing news items. Pascual recast what I wrote but urged me to write more.

  “You have the idea,” he said. “But you need practice. You have the chance to practice on this paper.”

  I wrote more—but the news items became lengthy articles, mostly expressing my personal reactions.

  “That’s it, Carl,” Pascual would shout, storming around the room. “Write your guts out! Write with thunder and blood!”

  I wrote about blood and conspiracies in the pea fields. Once, when urged to write a headline story, I sat down and composed this title:

  MURDER OVER CALIFORNIA!

  Pascual danced with glee around the room, drinking wine, shouting. “Let’s fight them with our bare fists, Carl! Five against the world!”

  I knew that something fatal was happening to him, making him hysterical and irrational. Then one day he suffered a stroke and his legs became completely paralyzed. It was the end of his thunder and blood.