by Larry Farmer
“You sound just like the International Monetary Fund,” she bit out.
“Yeah, well, I hope so,” I hit back. “The IMF is vilified for giving bankrupt third world countries a chance, and corrupt governments keep defaulting on the loans.”
“They are desperate countries,” she sneered.
“Not their dictators. Their dictators pocket it for personal gain and despotic power building. For bribes. For goons and guns to oppress their people. The IMF knows this and doesn’t intend to be held hostage just because liberals like thinking they have a monopoly in caring for the poor.”
She stared at me. It wasn’t hateful, but she didn’t seem happy with me.
“You aren’t doing anyone a favor by letting them slouch, Lois.”
“You are such a Southern redneck.”
“That ain’t redneck. That’s me wanting to help people.”
She studied me for a second, then reached up and touched me on the cheek. Her expression mellowed as she did so.
“I believe you, my darling,” she said softly. “I think you really mean it. You aren’t a redneck nor a Shylock. You’re the kindest, dearest, most caring man. You belong in the Peace Corps with me. We’ll get our job done with these people together.”
I looked at her as if I could see inside her. “You called me ‘darling’ just now,” I said. “I know in an endearing, not-to-be-overstated manner. But not too long ago you openly said you were attracted to me, and now I hear ‘darling’ from you. My hormones are exploding now. I’m just warning you. I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”
“It wasn’t a Freudian slip, and it was beyond an endearment, Mississippi. I repeat, you’re the dearest person I’ve ever met. You’re rubbing off on me, and I love it. You’ve the biggest heart of any friend, so-called liberal, or church cohort I ever had. Take it any way you hear it.” She stared at me for emphasis. “Darling mine.”
A tear formed at the corner of one of my eyes, and it embarrassed me. “Do you suppose we’re falling for one another?” I asked, surprised it came out so easily.
“That’s exactly what it means,” she replied. She rubbed at the moistness by my eye with a fingertip, then placed it on the edge of the upper part of her lip to savor like honey. She then moved her hand gently to the back of my neck to pull me toward her. We kissed. How precious the first moist, warm kiss, knowing that on the other side of it was a soul and feelings. We held to each other while savoring our passion.
“Supper can wait,” I suggested. “What I want to do is shower together, then go straight to bed.”
A deeper kiss was her response.
“I shutter the windows and tie them down at night,” she said. “That and bolt the doors. Just in case somewhere during the night some adventurer gets greedy for my goods. Meaning me. But with you here, I feel secure. And it’ll be too hot with everything shut. It’ll be especially hot in each other’s embrace.”
I looked over at her hammock. “How will we make love in that?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” she replied. “Because I swear, we’re going to find out.”
Chapter 7
I watched Mr. Rancon’s secretary struggle as she rewrote the entire manuscript containing the minutes of the meeting we’d just had. One little change seemed to require an entire rewrite. Maybe this was the break I was looking for with her.
She grimaced as she watched me walk over to her.
“I can help you with that,” I said.
“I’m too busy,” she replied sharply.
She was always too busy. Everyone in the whole bank was too busy for me to help them learn what could be done more simply and systematically.
I pointed to her change, the one I had just seen her make.
“I could put that beginning marker I showed you last week,” I said calmly and professionally, hoping it would trigger something in her psyche besides feeling harassed, “and then the end marker, and move that entire paragraph anywhere you want it. That’s what I was doing last week in my demonstration of the word processor. I know it doesn’t make sense. Things never make sense in the beginning. I could also insert the change you just made right smack dab in the middle of that paragraph, and the paragraph would adjust to the change.” I looked at her and grinned, hoping to lighten her up. “You were just too busy hating my guts, before, to see what I was doing.”
She almost smiled.
Filipino cultural etiquette reflects eastern Asian etiquette norms in that everyone has to have what’s called in Tagalog paki-sama. Paki means pleasing. Sama means together. In “pleasing-together” there is a lot of emphasis on saving face, which makes it hard to get things done if something runs counter to this saving-face form of etiquette. In fact, things often don’t get done at all because of it. Being blunt is too impolite in Filipino culture, where everything gets phrased to avoid displeasure. An American sees this as silly and childish. But that's why Filipinos often talk to one another in more strained detail than what Americans put up with. This is to smooth out the way, to make sure things are done just so. Americans, in terms of sensitivity to others, can be quite crude. This is exactly why I often mixed the two styles. Bluntness to shock them into paying attention, and exaggerated concern or flattery, perhaps humor, to smooth it out for them to respond favorably. Otherwise it’s just seen as scandal.
“I’ll do this for you if you let me,” I told our secretary. “I promise. You won’t have to lift another finger. If you don’t let me, you’ll have to rewrite this entire page. Please, this one time, give me a shot. I won’t instruct you, or get in your way. I’ll do it for you.”
She wasn’t convinced, but after thinking about it for a moment, she got out of her chair and let me behind the computer, which now had been moved next to the typewriter at her desk.
As she sat in the chair next to me, she leaned as far away from me as the back of her chair allowed. I hoped she would find something else to do, to limit the chance of her being intimidated again by the modern age machine I kept forcing down her throat. But she sat there, and slowly the sneer she wore turned to boredom.
She was pretty when she wasn’t hating my guts. Especially in the new blue-and-white square-patched dress the bank gave all the female employees as a uniform. She and one of the bank’s agricultural consultants had just gotten married. He was one of the few Filipinos bigger than me, and he thought he could take me physically. I knew this because he was ready to spar with me a couple of weeks before, for fun supposedly. I wasn’t sure, though, if it wasn’t to check out an American, an American Marine to be exact, or because his girlfriend had me on her most-hated list lately.
“Look,” I said to her, smiling. “I have the entire manuscript done for you on the computer screen here.”
“You left out the change Mr. Rancon just added,” she replied.
“No, I didn’t. I’m going to do it now. To show you how all the time you’ve been hating my guts was a waste.”
I saw her squirm from embarrassment.
Pow, just like that, the new sentence from Mr. Rancon was inserted into the manuscript. Her eyes lit up. I had shown her how to do it before, but instructed her at it then. She was so frustrated and upset with me for intruding on her duties she had obviously missed what I was getting at. But there it was now, and I had done it, not her. She saw it, and I knew I scored some points.
“Now, I’ll just save this file, and you’ll have it on diskette to use anytime you need. To make further changes or to print yet again. What shall we call the file?”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “What file are you talking about?”
“What I just did. This letter or report. Let’s give it a name, and it will store electronically on this floppy diskette I’m putting in the computer now.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Come on,” I coaxed. “Give a name that will make sense to you. Eight characters. MT101184. MT stands for meeting, and then today’s date.”
“I know that,” she s
aid, smiling. “I figured it out.”
“And you’ll figure the rest of it out, too,” I promised her.
“Okay, call it that,” she said. “And show me how to print it on our printer.”
I showed her which icon to electronically access to save the file and then the simple steps to print it. As the manuscript came out on paper, her eyes lit up again.
“You’ll have to tear off the perforated edges of the paper with the holes,” I explained. “But then it’s just like regular typewriter paper, except for a few little strands maybe.”
She inspected the paper and shook her head in disbelief. I had finally won with a staff member about this computer. I lived to see the day. Maybe now she would tell the other girls I trained in the spreadsheet or database organizer. I knew nothing was going to change things with them, but then, I’d thought that with the secretary, also.
It was a good way to end my day. On a positive note, as they say. I didn’t always get positive notes, so I grabbed this one, and made my way home.
I was in the mood for a San Miguel at my favorite local little carinderia but was already running out of money, even though it was only the middle of the month. There was always something to buy, usually for a project I was undertaking. Diskettes, manuals, bee supplies, tilapia fingerlings. So I decided I had to discipline myself and stay home, not spend anything. Lois was coming this weekend. We didn’t do much, but I wanted money to do something while she was here.
My Lola was always entertaining. I needed nothing else to make my spare time pass happily by if I just came home to her. I still could not believe she was ninety years old. She was more spry than I was. The gray head of hair she wore gave away her age, along with the way her midsized frame was slightly bent. She had a few age spots on her skin, but with her energy and wit there was a feeling of youth about her.
“You can have the small stove, Mississippi,” she said to me in her kitchen. “The wood-burning one.”
My real name of James didn’t survive with her past the first weekend Lois visited us. As soon as my Lola heard me addressed by Lois with my Peace Corps nickname, and understood the significance and humor of it, then Mississippi I was from then on. Even the college girls I boarded with picked up on it, to please my Lola, if nothing else.
“They’re both wood burning,” I replied.
“Yes, I know,” she said, “but we usually use ipil-ipil for the big stove.”
Ipil-ipil is a small native tree in the Philippines that is common and abundant. It not only is a good source of fuel for fires, but also is high in producing nitrogen in the soil, meaning a good source of natural fertilizer.
“That’s what we use in the small stove too,” I reminded her.
“You know what I mean, Mississippi.” She sighed.
I thought about nodding agreement that I did understand, but I too blatantly didn’t have a clue what she was getting at, so I just stared instead.
I heard rustling from the big stove on the other side of the room, where my Lola prepared supper for herself and the girls. I turned to look at what was happening.
“I may need your help.” She grinned at me when she saw my curiosity. “I’m ready to boil alive an octopus. It is half dead now, but when I put it in the boiling water it will resurrect. I have the pot lid, but if it fights hard, you may want to help me.”
I knew to take her seriously. Somehow she really did have a half-dead octopus she was going to wrestle with. She bent over to pick up a straw-mat basket-type bag, then glanced at me once again before laughing. Slowly, she placed the straw bag containing the octopus over the large pot of boiling water and began to tilt it.
“Here goes,” she said. “Can you come just in case?” she asked me.
I walked over to her, but stayed slightly behind. She dumped the contents of the bag over the water, and I watched a large clump of tentacled clay-like substance fall into the pot. Immediately, the large tentacles jerked past the pot edge. I saw the slimey suckers. The octopus jerked, trying to get out, but my Lola had the pot lid ready and slammed it on top of the creature. It struggled violently for a moment, went limp, and sank. My Lola kept the lid forced on it for another minute to be sure.
“Would you like some, Mississippi?” she asked me as she began to add spices and pour in rice.
“It’s not kosher,” I answered. “As far as seafood goes, Jews can only eat fish with scales and fins. Octopus is off limits.”
“I have seen you eat prawns,” she corrected.
“Only under laboratory conditions, Lola,” I replied with a grin.
“Oh, you are as bad as Christians,” she said, chuckling. “Rules are made to be broken. I have to remember that the next time I break a vow. I am doing this under laboratory conditions,” she said as if learning the words by heart.
“What is happening, Lola?” one of the college boarders inquired as she entered the kitchen. Soon the other female boarders followed her.
They were so young. College students in the Philippines are younger than American college youth in years, but they looked so young even beyond that. But, typically Filipina, they were so feminine and pretty. And so shy as to be timid.
“Our Lola is preparing an octopus for your supper,” I answered.
“We’re having octopus tonight, Lola?” another of the girls asked.
“Soon,” our Lola replied. “It is boiling now with the rice. I will have to chop it up first.”
Another of the girls looked at the small stove near the kitchen door where I was preparing my meal. “What is that, Tito Mississippi?” she asked. “You’re making another mess. Why do you have a cloth and crushed soybeans?”
“Tito” means uncle and is used as a term of endearment, like “Lola” is. Sometimes, I assume according to their mood, they called me kuya, which means sibling or cousin.
“I make tofu,” I answered. “With instructions from my Peace Corps manual.”
“Why don’t you buy tofu at the marketplace?” another of the girls asked.
“Because I want to know how to make it. I can buy in America.”
“And you can buy it here. So, what is the difference?”
“Because it comes from here,” I replied.
“It comes from China,” they all answered me in unison.
“It’s the same thing.”
“You are so weird, Tito Mississippi,” one girl said, laughing while shaking her head.
“When does Tita Lois come again?” another girl asked.
“This weekend,” I answered.
“She needs to show us again how to do the dance from Egypt,” the girl said. “I want to demonstrate it in one of my classes.”
“You and Tita Lois are so quiet when you are in your room,” the first girl noted. “What do you do up there? Aren’t you afraid of scandal?”
“Americans don’t know scandal,” I teased.
“Americans are shameless,” they all said.
“Why do you stay up there all alone when she is gone?” one of the girls asked.
“She is your kasama,” another said. “Aren’t you lonely with her gone?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“Why do you stay all by yourself in your room then, if you are lonely?”
“Because you have bad breath,” I answered back with a forced straight face.
“You are always joking, Tito Mississippi,” she answered back.
“I have so many things I want to do,” I replied.
“Like play your guitar,” one said. “Why don’t you play for us more often?”
“You are always studying,” I replied. “Besides, I like to read and play the radio. I just have so much to do upstairs. I don’t need a kasama. Thank you, though.”
I felt restless later on as I sat in my room. But now there were these blatant and open feelings for Lois, which changed my outlook about everything and in the process changed my daily routine. I still liked to read, or play guitar, or listen to the radio. But sometimes I ju
st wanted her and spent time doing nothing but daydreaming about her. Why was she so special? Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe it was just being half way around the world, plus the culture shock, that caused all this ache inside me. But all that made her specialness more appealing, for I determined she was indeed special.
She was pretty, but that wasn’t it. She held herself with dignity and reserve. That was part of it. She seemed such a good person. I loved her for that. She wanted things, but not only ambitious things.
I was not the most religious Jew in the world, but on the other hand, I was proud of my heritage. The Jews separated themselves from what they determined the pagan world. I had this long heritage inside me. While I wanted happiness and prosperity, I also wanted to stand out as special, too. To be up to changing the world in some way, big or small, for the better.
I saw the same thing in Lois.
The way she wanted to help people in her village. Not just by being a teacher, but by getting involved in the water project, for instance. That might sound like a typical Peace Corps objective, but I knew a lot of PCVs who couldn’t find anything to do. She tutored her two top students at night. They weren’t just smart; she saw a spark in them and knew she could give them confidence and direction, as well as a way out, out of horrific squalor. I admired her for that. But there was more. I cared like that too. Seeing it in her made it feel like a personal favor to me somehow. So she was indeed special in my eyes.
Now that we were officially an us, of sorts, she was part of my routine in addition to coming home for a cold beer, a small workout, cooking supper, then reading, or music. And now something always reminded me of her. Maybe it was something I wanted to share with her or tell her. Or sometimes I just wanted to feel her presence.
After finishing a book I had been reading the last few days, I was still bored. I felt listless and didn’t want to start another. I turned on my radio that doubled as a cassette player. It was always tuned into Radio Mindanao. At this time in the early evening, Muslim songs played. A man, something like a disc jockey perhaps, talked in a harsh, screeching voice. I had no idea what the DJ was saying, but it intrigued me. The dialect wasn’t Tagalog, nor anything similar, that I could tell. Someone explained to me he talked in Iranon, a Muslim dialect native to the coastal area in Mindanao where most Muslims lived. To listen to the DJ made me feel a castaway, as if wandering off in a ship or exploring unknown waters, hoping I didn’t fall off the edge of the world as I did so. This mood, at least, got me out of my boredom.
