It was not easy to understand why the Filipinos were brutal yet tender, nor was it easy to believe that they had been made this way by the reality of America. I still lacked the knowledge to synthesize the heart-breaking tragedies I had seen, and to project myself into their core so that I would be able to interpret them objectively. There were times when I found myself inextricably involved, not because I was drawn to this life by its swiftness and violence, but because I was a part and a product of the world in which it was born. I was swept by its tragic whirlpool, violently and inevitably; and it was only when I had become immune to violence and pain that I was able to project myself out of it. It was only then that I was able to integrate my experiences so that I could really find out what had happened to me in those tragic years.
While I was fleeing from the barbarity of the two Filipinos in Montana, I was also trying to escape from the barbarian that was myself. It took me a little lifetime to fight against the death of myself, to fight the slow decay that devoured me like a cancer.
I tried to get a freight train in Spokane for Seattle, but the railroad men drove me away. I took a bus and sat in the back seat, hiding myself from the white passengers. And once again, in the night, I saw Bremerton shining by the lake. When had it been that this bright city had softened the sadness in my heart? It seemed so long ago! A few more hours of slow driving, and I was at the station. I left the bus and walked around the block, watching for Oriental signs on the buildings and stores. I found the hotel where I had stayed when I had arrived in Seattle from the Philippines, but it was now under new management. I took a room for twenty-five cents and sneaked away with the sheets the next morning. I sold them in a Negro store down the block.
That was my first deliberately dishonest act. How did I feel? Did my conscience bother me? I was surprised to discover that I looked upon it merely as a part of my daily life. I did not feel guilty. I even thought of doing it again. With the money, I went to a Japanese restaurant where I ate broiled fish and fishbone soup for ten cents. Then I walked lazily in the sun, standing on street corners for hours, waiting for nothing.
Not far from King Street laundry workers were on strike; there was a picket line around the building. I stood on the bridge watching them, then climbed down the embankment to a shack where a man was running a mimeograph machine. He stopped when he saw me; then seizing a placard from a table, he placed it in my hands and dropped twenty-five cents in my pocket. I could not understand it. I was being paid to walk around a building with a sign. I went again the following morning, but the strike was called off and the workers went back to their machines.
I mingled with the cannery workers who were still in Seattle. They gambled away their earnings in the Chinese gambling houses and stayed on in the city, waiting for the apple season in Yakima Valley. I was fortunate to find a man with a car. He took me as far as Portland, where he found a job washing dishes at the bus station. I walked idly about the business district, then to the residential section, finally along the river where I stopped, remembering the young American girl who had walked with me in the night, years before.
It was still summer. There was a freshness in the air, something new and vibrant. I walked under the trees for hours. Then I went to the bus station and slept on a bench, sitting up when a policeman came to drive me away. I was terrified of being sent to jail. Toward dawn a Filipino, who was a busboy at the station cafeteria, told me that I could go to a certain address for something to eat and a place to sleep.
“Is it free?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I hope there is still room for you. If not, there is always something to eat.”
“I am hungry,” I said. “I don’t care about the room. I can walk in the streets. Food is what I need.”
“Here is the address,” he said, giving me a piece of paper.
I thanked him and left, my stomach aching for food. I found the place near Chinatown. I went up the stairs and gave the piece of paper to the man in the little office. He registered my name in a big ledger and gave me a ticket.
“Give this ticket to the night clerk and he will give you a place to sleep,” he said kindly. “Now you can go to the café downstairs and show this ticket. You will get something to eat. You can get two meals a day with it.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, going down the stairs in a hurry.
The place was full of unemployed men, standing by the wall and waiting their turn. The men at the tables and the counter were eating hungrily, wiping their mouths and beards with dirty handkerchiefs. I found a chair and sat down, forcing the scorched soup into my mouth. I wanted to eat it all, but my stomach roared. I put plenty of salt and pepper to kill the taste. It was another way of saving food that I had inherited from the peasants of Luzon who, because meat was almost impossible to preserve properly, spread strong vinegar and sprinkled salt over it.
I gave the ticket to the clerk when night came. He gave me a blanket and took me to a large hall where he chalked a space on the floor.
“This is your bed,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, spreading the blanket on the floor. When he was gone, I saw my number on the wall.
I could not sleep because of the musty smell of my blanket and the stench of the unwashed bodies of the men. They snored noisily. I put my hands on my nose and mouth, turning over on my stomach. I was the first to awaken. I rolled up my blanket and gave my number to the clerk. He gave back my ticket and told me to eat in the café under the building. I went downstairs so that the daytime man could sleep in my place by the wall.
The men were not allowed to bring women, but they could easily sidetrack the old night clerk. The women sneaked into the building in men’s clothes. They were not prostitutes, but homeless women on the road. Once, on my second night, a prostitute came into the hall with the other women and tried to solicit business, but she was brutally knocked down by a man and dragged into the washroom. I saw her again the next morning staggering like a drunken sailor on the sidewalk across from the building. I felt impelled to guide her through the busy city, for she reminded me of a woman I had once seen in Binalonan who had lost her mind.
I was terrified in this building of lost men. I tried to exclude myself from them, to shut myself off into a room of my own, away from their obscenities. But one daybreak, when I was suffering from stomach pains because of the food I had eaten that afternoon, I heard an old man creeping slowly toward me. I thought he was looking for his place on the floor, but when he reached me and started caressing my legs, I sprang to my feet and flung him away. I ran desperately in the dark, stumbling over the sleeping men, and down the stairway and into the street, where the sudden rush of fresh air brought tears to my eyes.
I went to the freight yards and waited for a train to California. I jumped into an empty boxcar and found there two Filipino cannery workers who had lost their money on the boat to Seattle. The train was slow, but the night was cool. The wind was soothing and the sky was clear. I was asleep when we passed through Eugene, but in my sleep I breathed the air freshened by its trees.
When I woke up my companions were gone. I crept to the door and opened it. I looked up and saw the sky burning with millions of stars. It was as bright as a clear summer day. The moon was large and brilliant, but its light was mild. I wanted to shout with joy, but could not open my mouth, so awestruck I was by the moonlight. I looked into the bright night sky. I looked without saying a word. I heard the metallic cry of the freight train, and I knew that heaven could not be far from the earth.
I got off the train in Klamath Falls. I was eating in a small restaurant when two policemen entered and grabbed me. It was so sudden and so unexpected that the spoon in my hand went flying across the room. A million things rushed into my mind at once: Were Pete and Myra killed by Poco? Did Frank commit a crime somewhere and implicate me? Had my brother Amado robbed a bank? I did not know what to say. I obediently followed my captors to the jailhouse.
I was hiding two dollars in my shoes when one of the policemen came into the cell. I knew from experience that money was important and the men in my world hungered and died for it. I watched him stand boldly before me, his strong legs spread wide apart, his hands on his hips, showing the menacing gun.
“Where did you come from?” he asked.
I played dumb, pantomiming that I did not speak the language.
“Are you Filipino?” He was trying another angle.
“Yes.”
Crack!
It was that quick and simple. His right fist landed on my jaw, felling me instantly. Seeing his shoes approaching, I quickly rolled over on my stomach and jumped to my feet; then retreating to a corner of the cell, I put up my hands to cover my face.
“You goddamn bastard!”
He hit me again.
I fell on the floor. I rolled over, face down, covering my head with my hands. He kicked me twice in rapid succession, rocking my body and plunging me into a dark ocean that drowned me in sleep. . . . Then from far away, I heard voices.
“Is the son-of-a-bitch dead?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you find any money on him?”
“Only two dollars in his shoes.”
“We could have a round of bourbon on it.”
“We might be able to bypass another brown monkey in town.”
“Yeah!”
They left. I heard them laughing outside, their car gliding softly down the street. I opened my eyes. It was dark! It could not be night. It was only a moment ago that I had been eating in a restaurant, and it had been bright morning. Slowly rising to a sitting position, I raised my right hand to my forehead. I was aware of the acrid smell of blood, but could not feel anything. I looked at my hand. It was smashed! I rubbed my face with my left hand, feeling the lacerations where the man’s fist had struck. I tore a piece off my shirt and wrapped my hand in it, blowing upon it to ease the pain.
The next morning the policemen dragged me from my cell. Their breaths were strong with whisky. I knew they were through with me. They told me to walk to the border of California, while they followed me in their car. When I stopped to remove the pebbles from my shoes, they drove the car a little faster so that the bumper kept hitting me. My feet were bleeding when I reached California soil.
They came out of the car. The policeman who had terrorized me the previous night struck me sharply across the face, laughing when he saw the blood coming out of my nose.
“That will teach you not to come to this town again,” he shouted.
I fell on my knees. I heard them laughing. There was a sadistic note in their voices. Was it possible that these men enjoyed cruelty? The brutality in the gambling houses was over money; it was over women among Filipinos. But the brutality of these policemen—what was it?
I started walking across a wide forest land toward the coast highway, some two hundred miles away. It seemed an endless journey. After two days and three nights, I came to a railroad town and caught a freight train for San Francisco. I sat on top of an empty boxcar and watched the beautiful land passing by. I saw places where I thought I would someday like to build a home.
My hand was swollen when I arrived in San Francisco. The city was windswept at night, but in the daytime the sun was tropic hot. The streetcars were clanging everywhere and the people were walking up and down the streets. It was like Seattle—the streets going upward and downward, the dark alleys curving suddenly to Chinatown, and the women coming into the light on their short, sturdy legs.
I took a freight train that carried me to Guadalupe, a small Oriental town off the coast highway. The streets were lined with gambling houses. It was Sunday and the Filipino farm workers were riotously spending their wages. I found an empty shack under the bridge that connected Guadalupe and Oceano’s rich farm land. I nursed my wounds in this shack. At night I went to the gambling houses. I could not work yet. So I begged from the lucky gamblers. Then I met a man who claimed that he had come from Binalonan. His name was Cortez, and he had a crew of farm workers in Santa Maria. When I was well enough to work I joined his crew.
It was autumn, the season for planting cauliflower. I went to the field at six in the morning and worked until six in the afternoon. It was tiresome, back-breaking work. I followed a wagon that carried cauliflower seedlings. The driver stopped now and then to drop a handful of the seedlings between the long furrows. I picked up the seedlings with one hand and dug into the ground with the other; then, putting a seedling into the hole, I moved on and dug another hole. I could hardly move when six o’clock came. I climbed into the wagon that took me slowly to the town.
The bunkhouse was made of old pieces of wood, and was crowded with men. There was no sewage disposal. When I ate swarms of flies fought over my plate. My bed was a makeshift tent under a huge water tank, away from the bunkhouse. I slept on a dirty cot: the blanket was never washed. The dining room was a pigsty. The cook had a harelip and his eyes were always bloodshot and watery.
I became acquainted with Benigno, one of the men in the camp. He was big and husky, but a sinus infection in early life had ruined his voice. One Sunday night, when I was already asleep, he came to my tent and woke me up.
“There is fun going on in the bunkhouse,” he said.
“I am tired,” I said.
“Come on.” He flung the blanket away from me and jerked me out of the cot. “Come on!”
I followed Benigno into the bunkhouse where thirty workers were quartered. Their cots were arranged in two rows, fifteen in each row, running from wall to wall. There was only a foot of free space between them. I noticed four men holding up some bedsheets around a cot. A fifth man was standing by, holding a basin of water. A hand came out of the sheets and took the basin. Benigno winked suggestively to me.
A young Filipino, half-dressed, came out of the sheets. Then an old man entered the wall of sheets, and the man who was holding the basin ran to the stove in the far end of the bunkhouse and poured warm water from a pot, then returned to the place where he was standing, waiting for the mysterious hand to reach for the basin. I looked around at the other men: they were sitting on their cots playing cards and musical instruments; writing letters; reading movie magazines. Others were smoking and staring into space; some were walking up and down, looking toward the wall of sheets when the basin of water disappeared. I knew at once that I had to run away. Was it possible that they were not horrified?
I was backing to the door when Benigno and two other men grabbed me. I struggled desperately. I knew what they would do to me. They carried me toward the wall of sheets, and the men who were holding them made way for me. I trembled violently, because what I saw was a naked Mexican woman waiting to receive me. The men pinned me down on the cot, face upward, while Benigno hurriedly fumbled for my belt. The woman bent over me, running her hands over my warming face. The men released me, withdrawing sheepishly from the wall of sheets. Then, as though from far away, I felt the tempestuous flow of blood in my veins.
It was like spring in an unknown land. There were roses everywhere, opening to a kind sun. I heard the sudden beating of waves upon rocks, the gentle fall of rain among palm leaves. Was this eternity? Was this the source of creation? Then I heard a thunderclap—and suddenly the sound and stench of humanity permeated the air, crushing the dream. And I heard the woman saying:
“There, now. It’s all over.”
I leaped to my feet, hiding myself from her.
“Did you like it?” she said.
I plunged through the wall of sheets and started running between the cots to the door. Benigno and the other men laughed, shouting my name. I could still hear their voices when I entered my tent, trembling with a nameless shame. . . .