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The Small Red Fox

Grace and her father, Totoy, in fall 2018. Photo: Alonso Nichols.

My mother complains that since my father retired, he spends too much time watching YouTube videos of the Philippines. “What is he looking for?” she asks me. I don’t tell her my theory: he’s searching for what he’s lost.

I’ve spent many hours sitting next to my father in a dark room watching a weekly news program from the Philippines called I-Witness, hosted by my friend Howie Severino. I’ve asked my father to watch Howie’s show with me so that he can translate. Since returning from my time in the Philippines, I’ve missed my first country, especially the people, and watching the show reminds me that a place exists where being Filipino is normal.

I pause the video every few minutes so that my father can translate, often after he exclaims, “Oh no, no, no,” or even swears.

“What is it, Dad?” I ask. “What’s happening?”

In one episode, people are making coal by burning scrap wood. They’re breathing smoke straight into their lungs, black dust coating their skin. The children will develop asthma; the adults, lung cancer. “This is Tondo, where I grew up,” he says. “I didn’t know they did this there.”

In another episode, people are collecting discarded food from dumpsters and other trash bins. Fried chicken with only a few bites left on the bones, the last bit of pork adobo from a combo plate, expired frozen meat, slimy vegetables. First, they wash the food in boiling water. Then they season these secondhand scraps and eat them. Now they’re spooning the leftover leftovers into clear plastic bags to sell. My father balances a piece of buttered toast on a paper towel, but he has stopped eating. Children the same age as his grandchildren dig through the refuse. An estimated 33 percent of Filipino children experience malnutrition or stunting according to 2015 data from the Food Nutrition and Research Institute. My father says, “Can you imagine? This is how hungry a person can be.”

There’s an episode that we don’t finish about the extrajudicial killings, which number in the thousands. Since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated in June 2016 and vowed to wage a war on drug users and pushers, in just over two years an estimated twelve to twenty thousand people, mostly urban poor suspected of being involved in the drug trade, have been killed by the Philippine National Police and unidentified gunmen. These astounding numbers include dozens of children who happened to be in the company of the adults who were shot, described by Duterte as “collateral damage” as well a few children targeted directly, including seventeen-year-old, unarmed Kian delos Santos, close circuit video footage of his execution death a counternarrative to the official one accusing him of shooting at officers during an anti-drug operation. At first, I don’t understand what I’m seeing—the number of human-shaped plastic bags being loaded into the back of a garbage truck is beyond comprehension. And then a bag rips open and I recognize feet and legs, brown and hard, stacked like firewood.

Not every video is appalling. Through Howie, my father teaches me the history of the jeepney, describes how the Chabacano language evolved, and introduces me to the archipelago’s remote beauty. He’s pleased to see that his friends, also Filipino immigrants, are interviewed by Howie about the Aquino family’s time in Massachusetts. Howie speaks with my father’s barkada, his close friend group, and they tell stories I’ve heard before: what Ninoy’s last night was like, how his goodbye felt final, and how, soon after that despedida, they received the call that he’d been assassinated on the tarmac at the Manila airport. Even after Ninoy’s widow and then his son become presidents of the Philippines, they visit with the barkada when they make state visits to the U.S. The episode shows snapshots of the barkada having cookouts, going apple picking, and their favorite activity, playing mahjong. My father points to the younger version of his friends gleefully, but then he’s suddenly quiet and grave. He pauses the video on his best friend, Tony, who moves mahjong tiles over the table. Almost every night for decades, my father played mahjong with Tony. Since his friend’s death, my father has lost his desire to play.

Two of my father’s brothers, Antonio and Cornelio, died within months of Tony. After each death, when I tried to comfort my father, he repeated what I’d heard him say all my life: “Gracie, that’s the cycle of life. You start out going to baptisms and birthday parties, First Communions, debuts, graduations, and then weddings. But at a certain point, life is mostly funerals. Other people’s funerals until it’s time for yours.”

For as long as I can remember, my father has prepared me for his death.

*

Immigration is a kind of death. You leave one life for another one with no guarantee of seeing your loved ones or home again. My cousin Jojo remembers that when his brother, Manong Ronnie, left for America, he thought their goodbye was forever. Flying to America was the same, in his mind, as dying and going to heaven. Before he left, Ronnie gave his brother a prayer card, something commonly given out at Catholic funerals. Much to Jojo’s surprise, only weeks later, his visa came through and the brothers reunited. Jojo has carried this prayer card in his wallet ever since. Later, during Ronnie’s funeral, Jojo reached into his back pocket, unfolded the card from his wallet, and waved it at us mourners.

My father is grateful that he spent his life in the U.S., but he also misses the Philippines. Perhaps watching the videos is his way to grieve for his first home, or to live vicariously. Maybe as he watches the scenes of daily life captured on CCTV camera he imagines himself back on those streets. Or maybe he just wants to hear his native tongue again after a lifetime of living in a second language. However, he complains that his understanding is limited—Filipinos use too many new words. “The population is really young,” I say. “And language is a shifting, living thing. It changes as people discover a need to express new things. Isn’t that fun?”

“But it’s moving too fast for me,” he says.

*

When he’s not watching Philippine TV, my father is likely glued to a British nature show. For a while, he becomes singularly focused on a video of barnacle goslings leaving their nest. My siblings and I ask each other, “Has Dad shown you that barnacle gosling video yet? What’s up with that?” We watch the five two-day-old goslings, the same number as my father’s children, jump from their nest, high up on a barren cliff. Their parents and food wait at the bottom, but the goslings can’t yet fly. From four hundred feet below, their parents call to them. “Come on. Jump already. Hurry!”

My father pauses the video. “There’s nothing their parents can do. They can’t help them,” he explains. “They can only watch them fall.”

I stare at him for a moment and wait for him to turn toward me. But he just resumes the video. The first chick jumps and my father holds his breath. The fluff of gray and white falls for an excruciatingly long time, almost thirty seconds. We wince when the chick bounces against rocks jutting from the cliff. We watch all five goslings leap, but only three get up and waddle toward their parents.

“Now watch this,” my father says, wistfully. The camera follows a red fox running toward the goslings, who gather unaware at their parents’ feet. They can’t fly out of danger. I know he’s viewed this moment dozens of times. Does he believe that if he watches it enough the video will end differently? “Even the cameraman can’t help them, he’s too far away. Hear how upset the cameraman is. He’s so affected.”

Suddenly, the fox arrives on the family scene, a shooting red arrow. “Gracie,” my father says. “No one can stop the fox.”

The parents squawk and spread their wings, but the fox is too fast. I am overcome with sadness. Who will call me Gracie once my father can’t?