“I’m on my way to Los Angeles,” she said. “But I don’t know anybody there.
“I was born in a small town in Pennsylvania,” she told me. “It’s a miserable mining town, full of Irish and dark Europeans. But at the age of twelve, when my mother died, I went to live with relatives in Philadelphia. I had a disagreement with my relatives when I finished college. The depression had already begun. I left then with a college friend, a boy of some wealth from a midwest city. . . .”
She lighted a cigarette and fell silent, staring out of the bus window. It was raining when we arrived in Los Angeles. I got a taxi and asked her if she would like to ride with me. When I got out at my street, Mary got out too and followed me with hesitant steps up the cement stairway that led to our apartment.
I almost stepped on Victor and my brother Amado, who were sleeping on the floor in the living room. José was sprawled on the couch—he had left his wife, I was told later. On the floor of the kitchen, wrapped in blankets, was Ganzo’s hulking form. He was snoring: he filled the house with the smell of liquor.
I woke up José and told him to go upstairs. He opened his eyes with a start, reached for his artificial leg, and hopped up the stairway holding the stump in his hands. I went to the kitchen and pulled a blanket from Ganzo. I gave it to Mary and told her to sleep on the couch. I lay down on the floor near her.
But I could not sleep. It was the same life all over again. None of us was employed. But we were together, and out of this fraternity something binding might come, to give us some sort of a foothold in America. Quietly I got up and lighted a match. I watched Mary’s face. She woke with a start.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“I was frightened,” she said.
“You can go to sleep now,” I told her.
“Good night.”
* * *
—
Sometime afterward, in answer to my inquiry regarding the charges against him, Nick told me that he had been ousted from the union. I remembered what Nick had told me in confidence when I was in Portland: that during the last two years of his administration unemployed union members had borrowed money from him to sustain themselves. Nick’s salary was negligible. His enemies had accused him of taking money from the union treasury, and of covering it with his salary. Waiting to trap him, when they were sure that Nick was unable to produce the money, they brought him before the members. Despite his good intentions he was tried and discharged, but his defeat was also the defeat of progressive unionism among Filipinos in Oregon.
Nick tried to regain his prestige in Alaska, where he had gone the following season to work, but even there the protagonists of the contract system were also gaining ground. This was the same method used when I had worked in Rose Inlet. I also received a letter from Conrado Torres in Seattle. Thus one by one, upon the disintegration of the CPFR, the UCAPAWA locals fell into the hands of opportunists. It was the beginning of a new reactionary leadership. This was significant because fascism had spread rapidly in Europe, giving way to a general confusion in all the civilized countries.
But I had Mary, and she was very understanding. She was ready to listen when I had something to say. I talked only when I was lonely and melancholy. She had become a symbol of goodness. My companions felt the same toward her. She became the delicate object of our affections. She was an angel molded into purity by the cleanliness of our thoughts. When a stranger came into our household and looked at her longingly, I could see some of my companions doubling their fists. This platonic relationship among us was healthy and clean, and in a way it gave me a new faith in myself.
Then from Seattle, tired of the confusion there, Conrado Torres came to stay with us. He and José, who were forever drinking, filled the apartment with the smell of whisky and sour wine. Every morning the Mexican children in the neighborhood came with their dirty juke sacks and collected the empty bottles in the backyard and sold them in a grocery store down the block; then, running to a bakery shop farther down the street, they bought loaves of bread and retired to their squalid houses.
Sometimes, however, emboldened by our camaraderie, they came into the kitchen and tasted the white rice that Mary cooked. They crowed with delight when the plates were filled with Filipino food and set before them. One time a boy of five came into the kitchen unannounced. José and Ganzo were preparing an edition of the Philippine Commonwealth Times. I did not see the boy grab the tall glass of wine on the table. When I looked for it the boy was already rolling on the floor. The glass was empty; the boy’s mouth was dripping with red wine. He was already drunk.
I was frightened. But José got up from the table and filled another glass with wine. He knelt by the boy and offered the wine again, laughing idiotically when the child emptied the glass. Then the boy lay flat on his stomach, speechless, as though he were dead. José carried him to the couch where he slept off his drunkenness.
But every day afterward the boy came into the kitchen looking eagerly for the bottle of wine. He had learned to enjoy drinking. I was ashamed of his debauchery. I could not look at him. But I knew that he had to drink, that he would drink. He would look at me with his beady, watery eyes when I hid the bottle, his mouth hanging loose, his hands jerking with nervousness. I filled the glass and placed it on the table, close within his reach. I would look in the other direction when he grabbed it.
Mary came home one afternoon and saw the Mexican boy with the bottle of wine. She took it away and slapped him sharply. Then she pushed him outside the house. He did not resist. He waited patiently in the backyard. When he was sure that Mary had gone, he threw pebbles at the window. José went out with the bottle. They drank the wine standing, passing the bottle back and forth. When it was empty they started cursing each other; then José smashed the bottle against the wall of the house.
I was ashamed. But we were in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. I knew that the Mexican boy was starving. The wine gave him release, and soothed his hunger. I thought of myself when I was his age. Would he grow up to revolt against his environment? Would he strike at his world? Would he escape? I knew that he would grow up to destroy this planless life around him, or it would destroy him. I knew that he would make a great noise before he was through with it.
* * *
—
Those were dark days. A black melancholy filled me. And then my brother Amado, who had not worked as he had promised when I saw him in Bakersfield, began bringing suspicious characters into the apartment. Mary was still with us, but she withdrew into her room. Then one day she disappeared without a word of farewell. When I came upon her months later, in a music store where she was a salesgirl, she clutched me and wept. The whole world could not contain my thoughts and emotions, losing one so delicate and molded into purity out of our hope for a better America.
Mary would not come to our apartment any more; she would go out into the cities; she would disappear forever. She would not want to see us any more. She would be lost to us forever. I wanted to shake humanity out of its insensibility. I wanted to crush all life into tiny fragments of hate. The tears that fell upon my coat were heavier than the whole world. I never saw Mary again. Conrado ran off to Alaska and stayed there for three years, coming back to the mainland only when he joined the war that had come upon the world.
Ganzo also retreated to Pismo Beach, in a shack by the sea. Victor went away to live with an eighteen-year-old girl with two children. He came back when the girl left him. I became acutely aware of my brother Macario. How old and work-scarred he had become! He dragged himself into the house at night, fell into bed like a log; when morning came he rushed off to work again, his steps becoming shorter and slower as the months passed.
I was ready for violence again, ready to lash out at anything. And I was afraid—afraid that I might kill.
I was reading a story I had written when Macario and Amado started arguing in the kitchen about Amado’s suspicious-loo
king friends. They were eating when suddenly I heard the table crash to the floor. I ran to the kitchen and found them grappling on the floor, rice still in their hands. I stood watching them, not knowing what to do. They were both my brothers. I did not want to take sides. But this fight was to decide on which side I would be, because as I watched them with mixed emotions, I knew that it was like the other incidents in my life. I had come at last to the turning point in my relationship with my brothers.
Suddenly Macario shouted to me. “Go away, Carlos!”
Amado was reaching for a butcher knife. I jumped to grab it away. But I was too late. It was already in his hand. Then doing what seemed to me the only thing to do, I grabbed a frying pan and struck Amado’s head with all my force. He fell backward and rolled over on his stomach. I snatched the knife from his weakening hand. Macario looked at me with surprised eyes, then went upstairs to wash the blood from his face and hands.
I watched Amado stir. Slowly he opened his eyes; when he saw me and memory returned, he got slowly to his feet and went to the living room. He sat on the couch and began to cry.
“You shouldn’t have done it, Carlos,” he said bitterly.
“I had to do it,” I tried to explain. “You were going to kill Macario. It was the only way I could take the knife away from you. I had to strike you into unconsciousness.”
“You shouldn’t have done it,” he said again. He went upstairs. He came down with his suitcase and stopped at the door. “You shouldn’t have done it,” he said almost in a whisper and left.
I ran to the door to ask for forgiveness, but he was gone. It was not only the physical pain that had hurt him; there were many things involved. I had no right to strike an older brother. It was a bad omen; I would never be happy again. I had not only transgressed against a family tradition; I had also struck down one of the gods of my childhood.
CHAPTER XLV
I was afraid to plunge into the life of violence on Temple Street. But I was driven to its very edge, since there was no intellectual preoccupation to hold me. Several times I found myself falling into it. I went back to books and tried to pick up where I left off. I became fascinated by three young American writers: Howard Fast, Jesse Stuart, Irwin Shaw. Fast had just written an historical novel, Stuart a volume of sonnets, and Shaw a collection of bitter short stories.
I was irresistibly drawn by their contemporaneousness, their realism and youth. In Fast, for instance, I caught a glimpse of the mainsprings of American democracy in the armies of George Washington; but in Stuart, I felt the quality and depth of men’s lives in their attachment to each other and to the common earth that sustains them. I felt a kinship with Shaw, whose bitterness and oblique humor are traceable to a feeling of isolation in a society where he is an unwilling heir to bourgeois taste and prejudice.
I was intellectually stimulated again—and I wanted to discuss problems which had been bothering me. But when I came home to our apartment, sitting alone in the midst of drab walls and ugly furniture, I felt like striking at my invisible foe. Then I began to write.
I began writing brief sketches of a time in my life long shrouded by the years. I wrote stories and sketches about my early life in America. It was easy to write: the words came swiftly and ideas shaped effortlessly out of them. I was in everything I wrote—in poetry, stories, and autobiographical pieces. Then some magazines in Manila began publishing me; in a little while small checks arrived to give me new hope. I wrote every day and the past began to come back to me in one sweeping flood of memories.
The time had come, I felt, for me to utilize my experiences in written form. I had something to live for now, and to fight the world with; and I was no longer afraid of the past. I felt that I would not run away from myself again.
* * *
—
Meanwhile our landlady died of a heart attack and another took her place, a young blonde woman new to the district. Not realizing that it was a notorious neighborhood, she wanted to make the apartment houses as respectable as possible. She threw out tenants one after the other until, eventually, we were all requested to move.
I knew the impossibility of finding a decent house. I suggested to Macario that a hotel room would be just as comfortable as an apartment. I found a hotel on Third Street that was tenanted by dark Europeans. It was managed by an elderly woman who, when I asked if Orientals were accepted, explained that it was not an American establishment. She meant that Filipinos were allowed to stay so long as they abided by the rules. In other places I had felt like a criminal, running up to my room in fear and closing the door suspiciously, as though the whole world were conspiring against me.
One evening, when Macario was well enough to work again, I was invited to attend a private party for a Filipino educator who had just arrived from the Philippines to study phases of the modern educational system in the United States. The party was held at the back of a restaurant on First Street; only men were invited because it would be primitive. When we were seated at the table, I noticed that there was no silverware. Then I understood what was meant by primitive, which was, of course, to eat with bare hands—the way I used to eat as a peasant in Luzon.
The prominent educator put on his ribboned glasses and began balling the steaming rice with his hand. He told brilliant anecdotes when his mouth was not full, recalling his youth with the poor peasants of northern Luzon where, it seemed, he had learned to eat rice with bare hands.
We were in the middle of dinner when two police detectives broke into the back room and shouted:
“Put up your hands and don’t move!”
I raised my hands out of habit, but I felt the old panic and indignation in me. My companions also submissively raised their hands—some even jumped to their feet and held their hands high above their heads. I resented raising my hands, but what could I do? The detectives pointed their guns at us, shouting for absolute silence. All of us raised our hands except our guest, who was innocent of the attitude of the police toward the Filipinos.
I saw one of the detectives staring at our guest; then, infuriated because he had not been obeyed, he jumped at him. The beribboned glasses fell on the floor and broke into pieces. The educator unwillingly raised his hands, the hot rice still neatly balled in his small palm.
I felt violated and outraged. I looked at my companions, oldtimers like myself and familiar with this kind of treatment. I thought of my gun lying on the table in my room. If only I had it with me! I turned around to look for a side door. But there was no way to escape.
When the detectives had searched our pockets for concealed weapons, they went their arrogant way and gave warning to the proprietor not to let white women into the place. The educator lowered his hands slowly and blinked at us. I thought for a moment he would break down and cry, but he bit his lips and gathered his dignity about him.
“My countrymen,” he said, “is there no way to make the American people respect us in the way that we respect them?”
I felt the old anger inside me. I jumped to my feet and rushed outside, running blindly toward my hotel. I wanted my gun. With it I could challenge our common enemy bullet for bullet. It seemed my only friend and comfort in this alien country—this smooth little bit of metal. As I ran through the crowd, hopping like a frog because of my stiff leg, I thought of Max Smith who had killed a white man with my gun. If he were only here! I knew he would have faced the two detectives with it. I knew he would rather die than witness the humiliation of a respected countryman.
But in my room Macario grabbed the gun from me, unloading it so that I could not use it. For a moment I looked at him with hatred, then I turned, went to my bed, and lay face down, holding my chest against the wild beating of my heart.
* * *
—
I felt numb for days. When I regained my composure, I sensed the futility of my writing. I wanted action—and violence. The monotony of my existence led me into the
Filipino underworld, into the tangle of Oriental gangland, where I came upon Julio of the Moxee City days. He had become a Robin Hood among Filipinos, because he swindled only Chinese and white men. He had a partner, a young, handsome Filipino named Rommy, who had just stolen nearly three hundred Federal Social Security checks.
“This is nothing,” he boasted. “I have already cashed about ten thousand dollars.”
“Do you call that excitement, Rommy?” Julio asked him jokingly.
“But there is money in it,” Rommy said.
“How do you get the checks?” I asked.
“It’s simple, pal,” Rommy said. “In the morning when the mailman comes around, I follow him with a bundle of shopping papers. I pretend to deliver the papers to the houses, but the moment the mailman turns his back, I grab the letters in the box and follow him to the next house. It is easy. I could follow him for blocks, and he wouldn’t suspect anything. Nobody suspects anything until after the checks fail to arrive.”
“Rommy can’t write his name,” Julio whispered to me.
“How do you cash the checks?” I asked Rommy.
“I cash them at the racetracks and in gambling houses,” he said.
“Tell him how you got into the racket, Rommy,” Julio said.
“I was tired of washing dishes,” Rommy said. “I was tired of democracy. Phooey!” He screwed up his eyes, twisted his mouth, and sneered.
One afternoon Ganzo found me wandering, walking aimlessly in Golden Gate Park. He took me to his room and gave me a bath. Then he put me in bed and locked the door. At midnight, when I awakened, he came in with sandwiches and a bottle of milk.
“What happened to me?” I asked him.
America Is in the Heart Page 33