Mail Order Bride
by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor

When you come to meet my family in the barrio, you
already have the envelopes and papers in your pocket.
You let us sit you at the head of the table beneath
the wood carving of the Last Supper and serve you an
evening meal. We listen to you marvel at the taste of
spicy chicken soup laced with tamarind. We do not tell
you that the chicken is our last meat, that the
portion you take is more than enough to feed my three
youngest sisters. Instead, we wait for you to agree;
then we will know the family will eat chicken or maybe
even pork for many months to come.

I do not eat that night while I sit next to you. I
spoon my soup onto my little brother’s plate, a last
farewell to our only boy. I hope you will let me send
money to him once we have left. For school, I will
tell you, my smile as soft as morning mist, perhaps a
little for new clothes. I try not to wonder how often
I will have to beg this way.

You sit on the porch late into the night, sipping
Black Label and sharing cigarettes with my father. My
mother sits in the kitchen trying not to listen to you
struggle through our language. My father is patient
and he speaks your language slowly, deliberately,
haltingly, so you will never suspect he knows more
than you thought he should.

I lay safe within folds of mosquito netting when you
give my father the papers and a thin envelope. He does
not keep the papers, instead glances at them to be
sure they look in order. The envelope looks so tiny in
his hand and he is unsure, uncertain that this is the
right thing to do. He looks into your hazy blue eyes
and rubs a hand through his thin, grey hair. Then he
folds the envelope in half and slips it into his back
pocket. There is not much more I can do for my family.
I am too small, too smart, too old for these barrio
boys. We both know it is better to find a life
elsewhere.

In the morning we walk to the church together and I
hold your dry white hand as we say our vows. You press
cool, rough lips to mine and it is done. There is no
question what you want from me, yet you will have to
wait until you take me to your country. There is only
time to kiss my mother and squeeze my father’s hand
before we must leave to board our plane. We sisters
try not to cry and my mother begs us to stay, but it
is just for show. There is nothing for you here except
banana plantations and open pit mines.

I take one last look at the white washed church then
begin to fold myself up. My knees to my mouth, my
polio back turned sideways, my too large eyes wrapped
in swaths of my black hair. You fold my crooked arms
haphazardly to fit into a small envelope you have
brought, then slip me into your jacket next to your
passport and wallet. With a satisfied smile, you pat
your pocket, your newest acquisition safe against your
heart.

Featured originally in Babaylan Speaks

Retelling Vallejo for Leovinilla Mayor by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor I will die in Calapan during the first typhoon in November, on a morning when the sky is inky like a flooded rice field, a morning like the dawns I long for, thick as coconut milk, a morning everyone has felt on their goose-pimpled skin. And the sky will be ebon then, over naked cement buildings, and the homes of a few cousins from my childhood, and mausoleums of my grandparents, where the mourners, huddled beneath black umbrellas whisper prayers, their fingers moving over bead after worn bead, “Sayang, so young,” their tongues clicking, their lips pursed. I expect it will be on a Wednesday like today, except the winds will buckle trees and rains will push into cracks near the ceiling, and the timid sun will hide; and I think it will be a Wednesday because never before was anything so hollow, this house, this room, this bright Wednesday; and my cat, curled under a chair soaking in a puddle of sun, her nose twitching with dreams, my husband singing to the radio, hands washing tea mugs. Bebot Mayor is dead. One Wednesday the typhoon came. It filled the bay with roaring waves. It toppled fishing huts. Villagers scrambled down streets for shelter. As always so many with tangled umbrellas, children clutched to hips, the sea churning first ankle deep, then chest high. Later, the mourners with their rosaries and candle stubs trudged through the retreating rain, back to the graves. And one took a white orchid from the old priest and placed it on the Sanchidora marble crypt and gripped the smooth edge, shaking his head, turning to murmur “let perpetual light fall.” inspired by “Variations on a Text by Vallejo” by Donald Justice

Market Song by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor Isn’t is strange to hear your father’s language fall around you, the sing-song phrases drawing you in? You struggle not to hear the secrets, the bargains of other Tagalogs laughing behind your back. You shrink before howling ghosts and you are nine again, standing at the doorway, trying not to listen, not to know you are the target of their sharpened tongues and shaking heads. Yet your lips yearn to curl over creamy m’s and rolling r’s, to share tsismis over pandesal and Sanka. Your hips shift and your feet scuff along the carved brick market floor. You try not to turn around to pick up the words among the white daisies and day-lilies they wind into ten dollar bouquets. Did they say something about a house? A party? A wedding! but the bride is black and sassy. How sad for his mother. Matigas ang ulo. And you swallow bitter as you straighten your back, round your eyes, lift your feet and hope you look like someone other than you are.

Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor received her MA degree in English with honors from Western Washington University in 2003 for her thesis “Notes from the Margins,” a mixed work of memoir and fiction. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in the Katipunan Literary Magazine and the online magazine Haruah. Currently she is working on her first novel, tentatively titled Maganda’s Comb, and she performs regularly as a storyteller in her local area. Her blog can be found at wordbinder.blogspot.com