How My Brother Leon

Brought Home A Wife

(American Colonial Literature)
By Manuel E. Arguilla

She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace.
She was lovely. SHe was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and
her forehead was on a level with his mouth.

"You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her
nails were long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning
when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple appeared momently high on
her right cheek. "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much." She
held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang
never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth
more cud and the sound of his insides was like a drum.

I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his
forehead now."

She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she
came and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never
stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by
she was scratching his forehead very daintily.

My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He
paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan.
Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca
Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its
forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.

"Maria---" my brother Leon said.

He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had
always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my
mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name.

"Yes, Noel."

Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself,
thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon
said backward and it sounded much better that way.

"There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward

the west.

She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while
she said quietly.

"You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"

Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino
real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan
whip against the spokes of the wheel.

We stood alone on the roadside.

The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was
wide and deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the
Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us
the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red
and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat,
which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened
like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with
fire.

He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the
earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a
cow lowed softly in answer.

"Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she
laughed with him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around
her shoulders.

"Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it."

"There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another
bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him."

She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across
Labang's neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very
white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple high
up on her right cheek.

"If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him
or become greatly jealous."

My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and
it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them.

I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he
was always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and
would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several
times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the
cart, placing the smaller on top.

She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to
my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she
had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly
dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running
away.

"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay
and hold on to anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand
labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to
the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the
back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the
wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears.

She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, her
skirts spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were
visible. her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her hair.
When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt
on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely
shuffling along, then I made him turn around.

"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said.

I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and
away we went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun
had sunk and down from the wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows
were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky burned with many
slow fires.

When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of
the Waig which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season,
my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said sternly:

"Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"

His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word
until we were on the rocky bottom of the Waig.

"Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do
you follow the Wait instead of the camino real?"

His fingers bit into my shoulder.

"Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."

Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of
Labang. Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still,
he said:

"And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us
with him instead of with Castano and the calesa."

Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do
you think Father should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you
ever seen so many stars before?"

I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks,
hands clasped across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of
the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows
had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was merely a dim,
grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The
thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth
mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air
and of the hay inside the cart.

"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her
voice. Very low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was
the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky.

"I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I
would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to
Nagrebcan?"

"Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many
times bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach."

"The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."

"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath.

"Making fun of me, Maria?"

She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's
hand and put it against her face.

I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the
cart between the wheels.

"Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and
my heart sant.
Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi
and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead,
the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed
drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart.

"Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked.

"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."

"I am asking you, Baldo," she said.

Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:

"Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is
home---Manong."

"So near already."

I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone
of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone
out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not
saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky
Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the
fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the
song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle
stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big
rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on,
until, laughing softly, she would join him again.

Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the
wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his
steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low
dikes.

"But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and
scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though
indistinctly.
"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?"
My brother Leon stopped singing.

"Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."

With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He
was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while
we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real.

"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around
the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through
the fields because---but I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home."

"Noel," she said.

"Yes, Maria."

"I am afraid. He may not like me."

"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you
talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was
wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered,
gentlest man I know."

We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but
Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with
the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home
and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said
"Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother
Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and
then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the
wheels.

I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down
but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned
Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would
crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time.
There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway,
and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over
the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's
hand were:

"Father... where is he?"

"He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg
is bothering him again."

I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch
Labang. But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me.
I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the
kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to
me they were crying, all of them.

There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the
big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He
was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he
saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking.

"Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked.

"No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."

He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair.

"She is very beautiful, Father."

"Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room
seemed to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving
horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her shoulders.

"No, Father, she was not afraid."

"On the way---"

"She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."

"What did he sing?"

"---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."

He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister
Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I
thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father was young. He
had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke
waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night
outside.

The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.

"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me.

I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn.

"It is time you watered him, my son," my father said.

I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon,
she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the
fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom.
 My Father Goes to Court
Carlos Bulosan
When I was four, I lived with my mother and brothers and sisters in a small town on the island of
Luzon. Father’s farm had been destroyed in 1918 by one of our sudden Philippine floods, so for
several years afterward we all lived in the town, though he preffered living in the country. We
had a next-door neighbor, a very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the
house. While we boys and girls played and sand in the sun, his children stayed inside and kept
the windows closed. His house was so tall that his children could look in the windows of our
house and watch us as we played, or slept, or ate, when there was any food in the house to eat.
Now, this rich man’s servants were always frying and cooking something good, and the aroma
of the food was wafted down to us from the windows of the big house. We hung about and took
all the wonderful smell of the food into our beings. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family
stood outside the windows of the rich man’s house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick
strips of bacon or ham. I can remember one afternoon when our neighbor’s servants roasted
three chickens. The chickens were young and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning
coals gave off an enchanting odor. We watched the servants turn the beautiful birds and inhaled
the heavenly spirit that drifted out to us.
Some days the rich man appeared at a window and glowered down at us. He looked at us one
by one, as though he were condemning us. We were all healthy because we went out in the sun
every day and bathed in the cool water of the river that flowed from the mountains into the sea.
Sometimes we wrestled with one another in the house before we went out to play.
We were always in the best of spirits and our laughter was contagious. Other neighbors who
passed by our house often stopped in our yard and joined us in our laughter.
Laughter was our only wealth. Father was a laughing man. He would go in to the living room
and stand in front of the tall mirror, stretching his mouth into grotesque shapes with his fingers
and making faces at himself, and then he would rush into the kitchen, roaring with laughter.
There was plenty to make us laugh. There was, for instance, the day one of my brothers came
home and brought a small bundle under his arm, pretending that he brought something to eat,
maybe a leg of lamb or something as extravagant as that to make our mouths water. He rushed
to mother and through the bundle into her lap. We all stood around, watching mother undo the
complicated strings. Suddenly a black cat leaped out of the bundle and ran wildly around the
house. Mother chased my brother and beat him with her little fists, while the rest of us bent
double, choking with laughter.
Another time one of my sisters suddenly started screaming in the middle of the night. Mother
reached her first and tried to calm her. My sister criedand groaned. When father lifted the lamp,
my sister stared at us with shame in her eyes.
“What is it?”
“I’m pregnant!” she cried.
“Don’t be a fool!” Father shouted.
“You’re only a child,” Mother said.
“I’m pregnant, I tell you!” she cried.
Father knelt by my sister. He put his hand on her belly and rubbed it gently. “How do you know
you are pregnant?” he asked.
“Feel it!” she cried.
We put our hands on her belly. There was something moving inside. Father was frightened.
Mother was shocked. “Who’s the man?” she asked.
“There’s no man,” my sister said.
‘What is it then?” Father asked.
Suddenly my sister opened her blouse and a bullfrog jumped out. Mother fainted, father
dropped the lamp, the oil spilled on the floor, and my sister’s blanket caught fire. One of my
brothers laughed so hard he rolled on the floor.
When the fire was extinguished and Mother was revived, we turned to bed and tried to sleep,
but Father kept on laughing so loud we could not sleep any more. Mother got up again and
lighted the oil lamp; we rolled up the mats on the floor and began dancing about and laughing
with all our might. We made so much noise that all our neighbors except the rich family came
into the yard and joined us in loud, genuine laughter.
It was like that for years.
As time went on, the rich man’s children became thin and anemic, while we grew even more
robust and full of fire. Our faces were bright and rosy, but theirs were pale and sad. The rich
man started to cough at night; then he coughed day and night. His wife began coughing too.
Then the children started to cough one after the other. At night their coughing sounded like
barking of a herd of seals. We hung outside their windows and listened to them. We wondered
what had happened to them. We knew that they were not sick from lack of nourishing food
because they were still always frying something delicious to eat.
One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. He looked at my
sisters, who had grown fat with laughing, then at my brothers, whose arms and legs were like
the molave, which is the sturdiest tree in the Philippines. He banged down the window and ran
through the house, shutting all the windows.
From that day on, the windows of our neighbor’s house were closed. The children did not come
outdoors anymore. We could still hear the servants cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how
tight the windows were shut, the aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted
gratuitously into our house.
One morning a policeman from the presidencia came to our house with a sealed paper. The rich
man had filled a complaint against us. Father took me with him when he went to the town clerk
and asked him what it was all about. He told Father the man claimed that for years we had been
stealing the spirit of his wealth and food.
When the day came for us to appear in court, Father brushed his old army uniform and
borrowed a pair of shoes from one of my brothers. We were the first to arrive. Father sat on a
chair in the center of the courtroom. Mother occupied a chair by the door. We children sat on a
long bench by the wall. Father kept jumping up his chair and stabbing the air with his arms, as
though he were defending himself before an imaginary jury.
The rich man arrived. He had grown old and feeble; his face was scarred with deep lines. With
him was his young lawyer. Spectators came in and almost filled the chairs. The judge entered
the room and sat on a high chair. We stood up in a hurry and sat down again.
After the courtroom preliminaries, the judge took at father. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.
“I don’t need a lawyer judge.” He said.
“Proceed,” said the judge.
The rich man’s lawyer jumped and pointed his finger at Father, “Do you or do you not agree that
you have been stealing the spirit of the complainant’s wealth and food?”
“I do not!” Father said.
“Do you or do you not agree that while the complainant’s servants cooked and fried fat legs of
lambs and young chicken breasts, you and your family hung outside your windows and inhaled
the heavenly spirit of the food?”
“I agree,” Father said.
“How do you account for that?”
Father got up and paced around, scratching his head thoughtfully. Then he said, “I would like to
see the children of the complainant, Judge.”
“Bring the children of the complainant.”
They came shyly. The spectators covered their mouths with their hands. They were so amazed
to see the children so thin and pale. The children walked silently to a bench and sat down
without looking up. They stared at the floor and moved their hands uneasily.
Father could not say anything at first. He just stood by his chair and looked at them. Finally he
said, “I should like to cross-examine the complainant.”
“Proceed.”
“Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your wealth and became a laughing family while yours
became morose and sad?” Father asked.
“Yes.”
“Then we are going to pay you right now,” Father said. He walked over to where we children
were sitting on the bench and took my straw hat off my lap and began filling it up with centavo
pieces that he took out his pockets. He went to Mother, who added a fistful of silver coins. My
brothers threw in their small change.
“May I walk to the room across the hall and stay there for a minutes, Judge?” Father asked.
“As you wish.”
“Thank you,” Father said. He strode into the other room with the hat in his hands. It was almost
full of coins. The doors of both rooms were wide open.
“Are you ready?” Father called.
“Proceed.” The judge said.
The sweet tinkle of coins carried beautifully into the room. The spectators turned their faces
toward the sound with wonder. Father came back and stood before the complainant.
“Did you hear it?” he asked.
“Hear what?” the man asked.
“The spirit of the money when I shook this hat?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you are paid.” Father said.
The rich man opened his mouth to speak and fell to the floor without a sound. The lawyer
rushed to his aid. The judge pounded his gravel.
“Case dismissed,” he said.
Father strutted around the courtroom. The judge even came down to his high chair to shake
hands with him. “By the way,” he whispered, “I had an uncle who died laughing.”
“You like to hear my family laugh, judge?” Father asked.
“Why not?”
Did you hear that children?” Father said.
My sister started it. The rest of us followed them and soon the spectators were laughing with us,
holding their bellies and bending over the chairs. And the laughter of the judge was the loudest
of all.
CYBERTURE

Footnote to Youth- Jose Garcia Villa

9 years ago
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The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his father
about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and let it
to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, but he wanted his father to know. What
he had to say was of serious import as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally
decided to tell it, at a thought came to him his father might refuse to consider it. His father
was silent hard-working farmer who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his
mother, Dodong’s grandmother.

I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.

The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy
smell. Many slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again deeper
into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong’s foot and crawled calmly
over it. Dodong go tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did
not bother to look where it fell, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he
was not young any more.

Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast
turned its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the
animal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it land the
carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without interests.

Dodong started homeward, thinking how he would break his news to his father. He wanted
to marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, the down on his upper
lip already was dark–these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man–he
was a man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought of it although he was by nature low
in statue. Thinking himself a man grown, Dodong felt he could do anything.

He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot,
but he dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on
walking. In the cool sundown he thought wild you dreams of himself and Teang. Teang, his
girl. She had a small brown face and small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How
desirable she was to him. She made him dream even during the day.

Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This field
work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back
the way he had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek.
Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman shorts, on
the grass. The he went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it vigorously. He
was not long in bathing, then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.

It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was lighted
and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat down on the
floor around the table to eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and caked sugar.

Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe and
when one held them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes
sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more,
but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parents.

Dodong’s mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to the batalan
to wash them. She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the
dishes out, but he was tired and now felt lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a
sister who could help his mother in the housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework
alone.

His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him again,
Dodong knew. Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but
he was afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it.
Afterward Dodong himself thought that if he had a decayed tooth he would be afraid to go
to the dentist; he would not be any bolder than his father.

Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out,
what he had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without
any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at his
father expectantly. A decrescent moon outside shed its feeble light into the window, graying
the still black temples of his father. His father looked old now.

“I am going to marry Teang,” Dodong said.

His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence became
intense and cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth again.
Dodong was uncomfortable and then became angry because his father kept looking at him
without uttering anything.

“I will marry Teang,” Dodong repeated. “I will marry Teang.”

His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.

“I asked her last night to marry me and she said…yes. I want your permission. I… want…
it….” There was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness, this
indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and
the little sounds it made broke dully the night stillness.

“Must you marry, Dodong?”

Dodong resented his father’s questions; his father himself had married. Dodong made a
quick impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused.

“You are very young, Dodong.”

“I’m… seventeen.”

“That’s very young to get married at.”

“I… I want to marry…Teang’s a good girl.”

“Tell your mother,” his father said.

“You tell her, tatay.”

“Dodong, you tell your inay.”

“You tell her.”

“All right, Dodong.”

“You will let me marry Teang?”

“Son, if that is your wish… of course…” There was a strange helpless light in his father’s
eyes. Dodong did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.

Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father.
For a while he even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his mind
to dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dream….

——————————————-

Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta was
damp. He was still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to
leave the house, but he had left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all.
He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the house. It had seemed to cage him, to compares his
thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of Teang. Teang was giving birth in the house;
she gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that, he seemed
to be rebuking him. He began to wonder madly if the process of childbirth was really
painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.

In a few moments he would be a father. “Father, father,” he whispered the word with awe,
with strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months
comfortable… “Your son,” people would soon be telling him. “Your son, Dodong.”

Dodong felt tired standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He
looked at his callused toes. Suppose he had ten children… What made him think that? What
was the matter with him? God!
He heard his mother’s voice from the house:

“Come up, Dodong. It is over.”

Suddenly he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was ashamed to his
mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken something no
properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman shorts.

“Dodong,” his mother called again. “Dodong.”

He turned to look again and this time saw his father beside his mother.

“It is a boy,” his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.

Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His parents’
eyes seemed to pierce him through and he felt limp.

He wanted to hide from them, to run away.

“Dodong, you come up. You come up,” he mother said.

Dodong did not want to come up and stayed in the sun.

“Dodong. Dodong.”

“I’ll… come up.”

Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps
slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents eyes. He
walked ahead of them so that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt
like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go
back to the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him.

His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently.

“Son,” his father said.

And his mother: “Dodong…”

How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong.

“Teang?” Dodong said.

“She’s sleeping. But you go on…”

His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep on
the papag with her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.
Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips, but
again that feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did not want
to be demonstrative.

The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him queerly.
He could not control the swelling of happiness in him.

“You give him to me. You give him to me,” Dodong said.

——————————————-

Blas was not Dodong’s only child. Many more children came. For six successive years a
new child came along. Dodong did not want any more children, but they came. It seemed
the coming of children could not be helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.

Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless and thin
now, even if she was young. There was interminable work to be done. Cooking.
Laundering. The house. The children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had not married.
She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike her. Yet she wished she had not
married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved. There has been another suitor, Lucio, older
than Dodong by nine years, and that was why she had chosen Dodong. Young Dodong.
Seventeen. Lucio had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he was childless
until now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have borne him children.
Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong…

Dodong whom life had made ugly.

One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the
moonlight, tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him.
He w anted to be wise about many things.

One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams. Why it must be so. Why one
was forsaken… after Love.

Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be
so to make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong
returned to the house humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was
denied it.

When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It was late at
night and Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas’s steps, for he could
not sleep well of nights. He watched Blas undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was
restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called him name and asked why he did not
sleep. Blas said he could not sleep.

“You better go to sleep. It is late,” Dodong said.

Blas raised himself on his elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering voice.
Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.

“Itay …,” Blas called softly.

Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.

“I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight.”

Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving.

“Itay, you think it over.”

Dodong lay silent.

“I love Tona and… I want her.”

Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard, where
everything was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.

“You want to marry Tona,” Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very
young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard…

“Yes.”

“Must you marry?”

Blas’s voice stilled with resentment. “I will marry Tona.”

Dodong kept silent, hurt.

“You have objections, Itay?” Blas asked acridly.

“Son… n-none…” (But truly, God, I don’t want Blas to marry yet… not yet. I don’t want
Blas to marry yet….)

But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph… now. Love must
triumph… now. Afterwards… it will be life.

As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong… and then Life.

Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry
for him.
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My Father Goes To Court (Carlos Bulosan)
My Father Goes To Court (Carlos Bulosan) When I was four, I lived with my mother and
brothers and sisters in a small town on the island of Luzon. Father’s farm had been destroyed in
1918 by one of our sudden Philippine floods, so several years afterwards we all lived in the town
though he preferred living in the country. We had as a next door neighbour a very rich man,
whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the house. While we boys and girls played and
sang in the sun, his children stayed inside and kept the windows closed. His house was so tall
that his children could look in the window of our house and watched us played, or slept, or ate,
when there was any food in the house to eat. Now, this rich man’s servants were always frying
and cooking something good, and the aroma of the food was wafted down to us form the
windows of the big house. We hung about and took all the wonderful smells of the food into our
beings. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family stood outside the windows of the rich
man’s house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick strips of bacon or ham. I can remember
one afternoon when our neighbour’s servants roasted three chickens. The chickens were young
and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning coals gave off an enchanting odour. We
watched the servants turn the beautiful birds and inhaled the heavenly spirit that drifted out to
us. Some days the rich man appeared at a window and glowered down at us. He looked at us
one by one, as though he were condemning us. We were all healthy because we went out in the
sun and bathed in the cool water of the river that flowed from the mountains into the sea.
Sometimes we wrestled with one another in the house before we went to play. We were always
in the best of spirits and our laughter was contagious. Other neighbours who passed by our
house often stopped in our yard and joined us in laughter. As time went on, the rich man’s
children became thin and anaemic, while we grew even more robust and full of life. Our faces
were bright and rosy, but theirs were pale and sad. The rich man started to cough at night; then
he coughed day and night. His wife began coughing too. Then the children started to cough,
one after the other. At night their coughing sounded like the barking of a herd of seals. We hung
outside their windows and listened to them. We wondered what happened. We knew that they
were not sick from the lack of nourishment because they were still always frying something
delicious to eat. One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. He
looked at my sisters, who had grown fat in laughing, then at my brothers, whose arms and legs
were like the molave, which is the sturdiest tree in the Philippines. He banged down the window
and ran through his house, shutting all the windows. From that day on, the windows of our
neighbour’s house were always closed. The children did not come out anymore. We could still
hear the servants cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how tight the windows were shut, the
aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted gratuitously into our house. One morning a
policeman from the presidencia came to our house with a sealed paper. The rich man had filed
a complaint against us. Father took me with him when he went to the town clerk and asked him
what it was about. He told Father the man claimed that for years we had been stealing the spirit
of his wealth and food. When the day came for us to appear in court, father brushed his old
Army uniform and borrowed a pair of shoes from one of my brothers. We were the first to arrive.
Father sat on a chair in the centre of the courtroom. Mother occupied a chair by the door. We
children sat on a long bench by the wall. Father kept jumping up from his chair and stabbing the
air with his arms, as though we were defending himself before an imaginary jury. The rich man
arrived. He had grown old and feeble; his face was scarred with deep lines. With him was his
young lawyer. Spectators came in and almost filled the chairs. The judge entered the room and
sat on a high chair. We stood in a hurry and then sat down again. After the courtroom
preliminaries, the judge looked at the Father. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked. “I don’t need
any lawyer, Judge,” he said. “Proceed,” said the judge. The rich man’s lawyer jumped up and
pointed his finger at Father. “Do you or you do not agree that you have been stealing the spirit
of the complaint’s wealth and food?” “I do not!” Father said. “Do you or do you not agree that
while the complaint’s servants cooked and fried fat legs of lamb or young chicken breast you
and your family hung outside his windows and inhaled the heavenly spirit of the food?” “I agree.”
Father said. “Do you or do you not agree that while the complaint and his children grew sickly
and tubercular you and your family became strong of limb and fair in complexion?” “I agree.”
Father said. “How do you account for that?” Father got up and paced around, scratching his
head thoughtfully. Then he said, “I would like to see the children of complaint, Judge.” “Bring in
the children of the complaint.” They came in shyly. The spectators covered their mouths with
their hands, they were so amazed to see the children so thin and pale. The children walked
silently to a bench and sat down without looking up. They stared at the floor and moved their
hands uneasily. Father could not say anything at first. He just stood by his chair and looked at
them. Finally he said, “I should like to cross – examine the complaint.” “Proceed.” “Do you claim
that we stole the spirit of your wealth and became a laughing family while yours became morose
and sad?” Father said. “Yes.” “Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your food by hanging
outside your windows when your servants cooked it?” Father said. “Yes.” “Then we are going to
pay you right now,” Father said. He walked over to where we children were sitting on the bench
and took my straw hat off my lap and began filling it up with centavo pieces that he took out of
his pockets. He went to Mother, who added a fistful of silver coins. My brothers threw in their
small change. “May I walk to the room across the hall and stay there for a few minutes, Judge?”
Father said. “As you wish.” “Thank you,” father said. He strode into the other room with the hat
in his hands. It was almost full of coins. The doors of both rooms were wide open. “Are you
ready?” Father called. “Proceed.” The judge said. The sweet tinkle of the coins carried
beautifully in the courtroom. The spectators turned their faces toward the sound with wonder.
Father came back and stood before the complaint. “Did you hear it?” he asked. “Hear what?”
the man asked. “The spirit of the money when I shook this hat?” he asked. “Yes.” “Then you are
paid,” Father said. The rich man opened his mouth to speak and fell to the floor without a sound.
The lawyer rushed to his aid. The judge pounded his gravel. “Case dismissed.” He said. Father
strutted around the courtroom the judge even came down from his high chair to shake hands
with him. “By the way,” he whispered, “I had an uncle who died laughing.” “You like to hear my
family laugh, Judge?” Father asked? “Why not?” “Did you hear that children?” father said. My
sisters started it. The rest of us followed them soon the spectators were laughing with us,
holding their bellies and bending over the chairs. And the laughter of the judge was the loudest
of all.