How Filipino of Us
to sanctify our spaghetti with this many ungodly packets of sugar, dressing our noodles in a wet bed of banana ketchup, Eden cheese, and hot dog chunks that we watch you slurp in the backseat at 6am, because breakfast is God, and you will never have a meal so generous. Bet our Grab driver has never seen a sardine formation like this: all nine of us packed with practiced ease into the Toyota Avanza, hip to elbow to cheek to cheek. But he remains silent for the journey, our gaunt-faced reaper. His AC sputters like a black lung. TWICE on the radio, imploring love, what is love? The rest of the song is Eldritch Code, but when has that ever stopped us from dancing, fitting our mouths around strange vowels like all our hand-me-downs? Your European madam said that was what they liked most about you, about all of us—pliable, accommodating, joyful you, and that is why you have to go. You always were the better dancer. We back up your solo. We line our guts with cold grease that will last us through the three-hour commute home. Without fanfare, manong admits us into Manila’s sooty heart. Outside, smog drifts and coalesces, the diametric opposite of snow. White Christmas, you called it, but how could Christmas ever be anything but red, wet-market red, lucky-envelope red, back-fervently-flayed-for-you red, the red of severance? Please don’t make a scene, you make us swear as we pull into departures. You’ve done the prep work, culled all that cunty melodrama from your bones to ease your entry into Canada’s cold, clean machine. But because we are who we are, we fill the morning with whistles, stuff your pockets with adobo peanuts, orange Zest-O, hot pandesal in a plastic bag, condoms, then shoot finger hearts through the window. Holler, take pictures! and pretend you will face nothing more primal than hunger. And because you are you, you cover ten whole hip-heady steps before turning to land a dip—back arched, like we taught you, right foot a pendulum swinging to the sky, bags everywhere. Birds scatter. A security guard startles out of a daydream. Stone-faced, you gather your things. Now, time to make do with our promise: we let a sugared K-pop track sweep you into the terminal that gulps in another one of us and we do not look back. Later, EDSA traffic strands us with the sleepy homecoming crowd. We shanty over the currents. We roll the windows down halfway. We trace phalluses in the glass, then flowers over the phalluses. At home, we think twice about taking off our shoes, instead tracking our footprints inside, creating a trail you can follow home.
Andy Lopez (she/they) (@andylopezwrites) lives and writes in the Philippines. She was a 2021 fellow for the GrubStreet Emerging Writer Fellowship and the UST National Writers Workshop. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and has been published in The Best Small Fictions 2021, Longleaf Review, CHEAP POP, Underblong, and other magazines and anthologies. Write to her at lopezandreaingrid@gmail.com.