We were children whose fathers lived elsewhere. They worked abroad for most of the year. We waited for them to show up at the door. Once in a while we forgot we were waiting for someone.
We met when we moved to the same street named after a mountain range, into unfinished houses with garages waiting to be filled. Our mothers ran each month to remittance centers, picking up money wired from America, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, or an M/V in the middle of the sea.
We lived in a cut-and-dried community, but made to sound exotic with the name of a Caribbean country. We lived close to the gate that stayed half-open with a guard who let everyone in, on the side where the smooth pavement started and the bordering barangay’s tight, rutty roads ended. We lived here, and our fathers didn’t.
Inside, the furniture reminded us of an absence. We repurposed empty dining chairs into side tables that now held a desk fan in the living area. In the main bedroom, we sometimes slept on the side of the mattress that stayed firm without a body impression.
“They will call soon,” our mothers said. And we waited—first for a phone line installation, then at our neighbor’s house that had a connection next to the handset at the agreed date and time.
We bragged to our friends that they’d flown on a plane or steered a ship. We believed moving away brought some cachet. We envied neighbors with a full house. To make ourselves feel better, we believed they couldn’t cut it.
They’ve been away for so long. They didn’t hear us say our first “dada.” We wondered if, or when, we would see them again. We were good at wondering. As children, that’s all we could do. We believed the periodic phone calls, cassette tapes, and letters sufficed.
When we saw them, it was usually close to Christmastime. We saw them for the first time when we were in first grade. We saw them again when we were the same age they were the first time they left. We almost missed them.
We found out there were more of us once we crossed the threshold of our subdivision, in school and the rest of the country. Where are they? we asked. Sa barko! Sa Saudi! Sa Japan! we said. Sometimes we didn’t have to ask. The house gates were adorned with iron anchors and helms that anticipated our questions.
We spotted each other’s imbalance on church pews. Then at the mall coming in and out of clothing shops, carrying a paper bag or two. When it was time for lunch, our mothers sat at the head of the restaurant table. At times a different woman fed us, an extra pair of helping hands we could afford. When we cried, it was threatened that they wouldn’t come back. When we screamed and didn’t stop, we were told we were the reason they left.
They didn’t get angry over the phone. They didn’t know much about us. Even if they did, they didn’t have the right to, after all.
Our mothers traveled from far-flung provinces. Their move to Manila was its own odyssey. They twisted their tongues to the language of their children and the big city. They talked about each other, yet looked after each other. When they met, their greeting came out in the form of a question. “Mare, when is Pare coming home?”
“They will visit soon,” our mothers said.
At the airport, we stood behind the barricade at the arrival area, craning our necks, eyeing the passengers spilling back to the homeland in their unofficial uniform of jeans, jackets, and mustaches.
We whisked them straight to duty-free shops to fulfill their duties. We grabbed packs of Snickers. We tried on pairs of sneakers. We wore them the next day even if it defied school uniform policy. We brought our Polly Pockets, Legos, and G.I. Joes in our new backpacks, still unavailable at local shops. We shared our fortune and passed around canisters of Cheez Balls or prisms of Toblerone at recess. For a few days, we were the coolest in class.
Their luggage and boxes replenished our depleted cupboards. The morning after they arrived, we came along with them, zigzagging between houses on our street, bearing gifts from foreign ports and cities. We rang doorbells and knocked on iron gates to hand out candies and chocolates. Christmas was still weeks away, but their friends already got cartons of cigarettes and bottles of Blue Label. They didn’t quite look like Santa in their short beards, sunglasses, and slight bellies.
Each homecoming always felt like a first meeting. They slipped in words we didn’t understand. When we said hello, they said hey, mate! When we asked for more toys, they said mafi fulus. Soon we eased into a kind of comfort, our version of a family. For a few weeks, no dining chair was empty, and no side of the bedsheet stayed unwrinkled. We took up half of the street walking just a tad more leisurely, performing for the eyes peeking through windows.
We attended a whirlwind of family and friend outings and stay-ins. We already knew visits would last only a few weeks. When the time came, we resisted calling the taxi.
We waited for the crackle of the ship-to-shore radio just as they promised to keep in touch via over-over. We counted the years, months, weeks, days, and hours until their next touchdown, starting from the second of their take-off. We waited.
Then we waited some more.
We expected someone and something else to arrive soon—the harbinger of an ersatz existence. The delivery man asked us to stand next to the parcel in the living room and took our photo. As soon as he left, we ripped off the packaging tape with delight, bandages from a wound that was always healing. We pushed the cardboard flaps onto their sides and fished out shoes and shirts, their sizes growing larger in every shipment. We rummaged through boxes of Oil of Olay and Old Spice, slippery touches of their love and affection. We rationed the cans of corned beef over several meals as if to stretch out our time with them, hoping they would last until their next arrival, if not the next delivery. We unwrapped Fruit of the Loom towels. Over our shoulders we draped them—presents as proxies of their presence—and for a moment, they were with us.
We excelled in different subjects in school. In geography, we confidently pointed on the map when asked where they lived. In reading, we impressed everyone with our knowledge of acronyms: OFW for Overseas Filipino Workers, DH for domestic helpers, OWWA for Overseas Workers Welfare Administration. In math, we easily grasped multiplication and decimals to calculate currency exchange rates. In economics, we feared financial downturns but monitored currency fluctuations. We secretly celebrated when the peso went up against the dollar.
To fill our time, we sat by the sofa watching noontime shows and soaps on TV. Or listened to that one album on repeat from the multi-tray CD player. We took pride and comfort in these shiny possessions to replace our dispossession. When “Babalik Ka Rin” played on the radio, we only hummed its tune in our heads. We couldn’t sing its lyrics about a person’s longing for someone and yearning for their return from abroad. On lazy summer afternoons, we listened to the radio host who patched long-distance phone calls between locals and their loved ones abroad. For a second they were relieved to hear the familiar voice, before sharing the ominous news of an illness, accident, or death.
We followed the case of Flor Contemplacion on her way to the noose in Singapore, and Sarah Bala-bagan in and out of prison between her hundred lashings in the United Arab Emirates. We felt sorry for them. But we drew a line between housecleaners and welders, child-carers and crane operators, senior aides and seamen.
We didn’t ask when they’d return for good. In some years they visited twice to celebrate a special occasion, even thrice when something had gone awry.
“I will visit next year,” they said.
We went to college and finished top of the class. We skipped classes, and shaved one side of our heads and dyed the remaining half.
“Just another year,” they said.
We should have known of their final homecoming. Perhaps when a car eventually rolled in and parked at the garage. Maybe when the wire transfers waned, or when the phone rang less frequently. The length of the calls got shorter. The voices grew fainter. Or when the box that arrived, once big and brimming with gifts, appeared smaller and lighter. Or when the last box that arrived contained them.
They landed as if setting foot in a foreign country. They returned as if to an adopted family. And maybe in their quiet moments they thought of leaving again, or wished they had never left. They wondered if the higher disposable income was worth exchanging for their now tired and disposable bodies. They retired and not long after they expired.
We were children whose fathers were gone most of our lives. We made a vow never to leave. Sometimes we miss the boxes. Sometimes we’re now the ones who ship them back home.
Andrew Zubiri is a Filipino writer and educational technologist living in Boston. His essays have appeared in AGNI, Ninth Letter, and other publications.
