There is no gold on the other side of the rainbow. Now that I’m an Amerikana, courtesy of my formerly OFW mom, the pixie dust left by reading Nancy Drew, Sweet Valley High, and Archie’s comics as well as the smoke and mirrors of celluloid films like Rambo and Terminator and stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Travolta, and Tom Cruise, I know better. Steve and his Winnebago dream bring me home to that time when I looked longingly at America. We heard the streets were paved with freedom fries and Fort Knox gold. marine in Olongapo City.Īsk us where we’d like to go and we’d say Disneyland even though most of us won’t leave our small sleepy towns to go to Manila. And sometimes we’d read news that put us all through a looking glass of circus mirrors: like how in 2014 Jennifer Laude gets murdered by a U.S. ![]() Even when the American soldiers and their generals left, the places festered and now John Does from everywhere ask for virgin ten-year-old boys and girls to deflower. Stranger Things season four reminds me that in the Philippines, we loved everything American and said idioms like ‘you’re the apple of my eye’ when the only time we’ve seen apples was when the Americans came in fatigues with MREs and their rations of SPAM and Hershey’s chocolate bars looking for go-go dancers in makeshift bars near American bases. My ears catch that word, Winnebago, a gold nugget stuck in the sieve. Then later he reveals that it’s always her with him by her side in that Winnebago. Steve tells Nancy Wheeler his Winnebago summer dreams: screaming kids, a map and an open road, American as apple pie. We press our sweaty palms together in solidarity until we see Mama racing up the block, dodging looters being looted. ![]() Running with televisions, stereos, boomboxes. And doors stay locked, and rallying cries of "It's Christmastime!" are bouncing off faded bricks and metal fire escapes.įrom our window, we witness the wilding. But up here on 116th street, Mama doesn't have a midtown husband. Later, I'll want to remember this night like my father does-in his midtown apartment with his midtown wife and tell his story like it's my own, where neighbors share candles and meals and cocktails. The silence shattered by breaking glass and pop, pop, pops. Sweating bullets as trash cans blaze, and the streets fill with shadows. We're suffocating, glued to the window because Mama isn't home from night school after working all day. ![]() My sister opens the kitchen window, and the stench of garbage that hasn't been picked up for days slips in. Now, I'm lighting the sainted candle Mama keeps in the sink while the cockroaches scatter. Minutes ago, I was heating Arroz con Gandules on the stove, my sister dancing in front of the air conditioner to Donna Summer's I Feel Love. When my sister sneaks up on me, I almost scream. The kind of still you see in movies before a big scare. And, for a moment, the neighborhood was still. The darkness came in one long wave, disappearing an iconic skyline along with it.
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