Biddle City Filipina, and: Autobiography Via Forgetting, and: One Cactus, and: Watching a Documentary about Imelda Marcos, I Think about the Bottoms of My Cousin's Feet

Biddle City Filipina

I married a good man, he works for GM, good salary, benefits. Where is he now, he's outside. Shoveling the snow after blizzard.

With GM, good salary and benefits, we can send money to family. He shovels the snow after blizzard. Would you like to take home pinakbet?

We can send money to my family. No, he doesn't like Filipino food. Would you like to take home pinakbet? Return the container when you're done.

No, he doesn't like Filipino food, only chicken, pizza, spaghetti. Return the container when you're done. Let's go shopping sometime, OK?

Only chicken, pizza, spaghetti. I make it for him, but I don't eat it. Let's go shopping sometime, OK? I know how to look nice for him.

I make it for him, but I don't eat it. Even though I'm mostly at home, I know how to look nice for him. I pray to God that this is my real life even though I'm mostly at home. I see the snow on our porch, it glistens. I pray to God that this is my real life. I don't want to be dreaming.

I see the snow on our porch, it glistens. I married a good man, he works. I don't want to be dreaming. Where is he now? He's outside.

Autobiography Via Forgetting

1

I once heard someone call themselves "a string of memories." The opposite is true for me. I'm a cement block of forgetfulness. For every new memory, something else gets lost or disfigured: a recipe for lentils, dance moves, someone's birthday, names of directors and actors. I manage to get them all wrong. Some people claim that they've retained memories from past lives. I can't remember what happened in this one.

2

Most of my childhood on the military base is gone from my brain. I ask my brother questions, and we sort out what we know. I say, But didn't we? And he says, I think that was someone else. The thing I remember most is the blue feeling in my chest, that sudden gloom. My dad told me that he recently spoke to a colonel whom he worked for in the nineties. The colonel remembered me as "the child who used to cry all the time." I don't remember crying all the time, but it's possible I did because I could never remember that I was safe and happy.

3

I read somewhere that memory is not stored as it is on a hard drive. Instead, it is something you re-create in each version of remembering. It is a process of sculpting. The only difference between memory and imagination is the clay you use.

4

When I was about eight or nine (or was it six or seven?) I asked my mother to please give me another sibling. It was not that my brother wasn't enough, but I wanted to be the middle child, to sit between two bodies where I could be securely tucked away. This child would be another brain for our family, another memory maker. My parents said no, didn't even try! So, I remained the youngest in my family, a flea clinging to the tip of our animal tail. We don't know and will never know what that third child could've remembered that we've all now forgotten.

5

In my early twenties, I had a boyfriend who asked me if I ever forgot I was a racial minority. I said, Yes, I forget everything. But of course, it was a stupid answer to a stupid question. I mean, who walks around thinking all the time: I'm a minority, I'm a minority.

6

There are places in the US like Daly City in Northern California where more than half the people are Asian, where cultures and languages from nations...