Fifteen
Copyright © 2019-2020 by VeryWellAged
Back to Construction, connection, and change...2
Author's note: These chapters are NOT stand-alones...The story starts here.
Construction, connection, and change...3
I think I will have recuperated by this evening.
At one-thirty, Lyn and Lexi are back at the lot. Lyn sits down right next to me and just sort of hangs on to me, sheltering under my arm. Lexi’s face displays a firmness, possibly indicating in one manner what Lyn is indicating in another, that the news about the adding of Shara and Gladies has been shared.
By two-thirty I am getting texts from Jana, from Si2x, from Reina, all apologizing for what has happened and telling me I did the right thing with Gladies and Shara. At three, I get a text from May.
Thank you, Craig. We are really happy now.
A little after that, one comes in from Dido.
Ate Gladies tell ’Nay and I hear from Lexi the same. This day I always remember. Always. Thank you, very, very much.
Lyn and Lexi leave the lot at four-thirty.
Just before I leave, an hour later, I get a text from a number that is not in my contacts list.
Sir, this Dina. I hear from mother that we accepted. I promise I do what you want. When will this happen. I want soon.
Dina, I am not sure when. But I am glad I have your number now. Still, I told you last night, not yet!
Sir, I can home study just like Dido. No problem with that.
That may be an interesting thing to consider when your new home is built here. But not as an excuse to have sex sooner.
It could be before we move, Sir. For both Mica and me. We could spend more times with our nephew.
OK, I will think about the schooling. But no sex for now.
OK, Sir. Thank you for considering it.
I had ten. What madness, to have ten girls is beyond crazy. I am now adding how many, potentially? Granted, not all at once. The kids are way too young but, eventually, unless I can figure out an off-ramp, I am adding five more!
Fifteen. Fifteen women and girls. Is it incest if there is no marriage, and no consanguinity? It sure seems like it ought to be to me. But I sure am no expert on this.
Fifteen. It makes no sense. Yes, I know that, by age thirty, a woman here has to have found the answer to her economic future or she is screwed. Gladies is thirty-one and Shara is twenty-nine. That’s close enough for both. I know there is no man in Gladies’ life now, and Shara?... her man was her father. Even her little boy is his, and then the guy died of diabetes.
OK, I can understand why there might be twelve, right? But fifteen? To get that adds kids currently aged eleven, ten and nine. OK, yes, not this year, but in the years to come, and the time it may take before the house is complete? There might well be fifteen when all the construction is done!
Might the young ones change their minds? I hope so. Oh, Father Dan, I truly pray that it is so. But, my beliefs, my values, are not the values in operation here.
My values are from a culture and a place that has no currency here. Here, a land where rice is life, and where if a girl can bleed, she can breed, the rules of how life works are different.
I ride home confused once again. As much as I told myself to let go of those guideposts of right and wrong, which I grew up with, it is proving so damned hard to do so.
And here’s another lesson about economics. As we grow up, our world and culture are shaped by the economics of our existence while growing up. Those values stay with us throughout our lives, even when our status in life or where we live radically changes.
Folks who grow up middle class are statistically more likely to become ‘homeless’ than poor folks who have always had to find a way to scrape by when they face severe economic challenges.
That’s also why we have the derisive term ‘nouveau riche.’ People who aren’t accustomed to great wealth tend to behave foolishly when they get it.
And that is why the truly rich, when they find themselves financially ruined (in their minds, though not in the minds of others) may jump out of windows and use other such foolish methods of suicide. They simply are incapable of existing without that to which they were born, even if that just means a middle class existence.
Economics creates culture. To understand who we are and what we believe requires understanding how the economic realities we experienced shaped our view of the world around us.
In saying economics creates culture, I am only observing what anyone with a passport, the willingness to travel, and good brain can decipher.
Those whose economic reality is much like their childhood and never ventured far from home, and those with a limited intellect, may well scoff at all this. But that doesn’t make the truth less true. It just means there are folks who will never understand.
I live here because of economics. What I have learned is that my research failed to take into account how those same economic conditions would impact my ‘social’ life.
I had traveled enough prior to all this to have known it. In a way I did know it. I just failed to process it in my evaluation of finding the ‘right’ place to choose.
Did I screw up?
No, but I am the owner of a very confused mind right now. If I have discombobulated the girls regarding their parenting practices, I am no less discombobulated for other reasons.
At moments of confusion no less profound than this, I suspect my dear dad would have poured himself a wee bit of Jameson whiskey. Well, OK, a bit more than a bit.
Mel might well pour me a rum as soon as she sees me, if it were not for her current state of confusion, which I suspect is as great as my own.
Walking in the door, I see the table has been set. All the place settings are there. While not all the girls are in evidence, most are. I wash up, and all seem ready to sit down as I come out of the washroom.
I don’t hear any kids, but all ten of my girls are assembled. I must be showing confusion in my expression, because Jana informs me that Dina, Lanie and Mica are caring for the kids while we have our supper.
Well, that resolves one confusion but creates a new one. This time it is Lyn who explains.
We decide that the girls live here now. The mothers give up the place they rent. Now both out at the lot with the little ones full time. Their girls can walk to school from here, so that not a problem. When we all move to the lot the girls ready for home schooling. Now, the mothers have more money because they not have to pay rent, or electric, or transportation for the three girls.
And with that I get a look.
I am not going to ask why they will be ready for home schooling because the look told me all I needed to know. Lyn expects they will be pregnant.
The immediate confusions resolved, I pay attention to the food on my plate. Please, please, let there be nothing else, now.
Sir?
Yes, Si2x?
Sir, are we to follow Dido’s family tradition?
OK, so that is what I really did not need to hear. Why would anyone even think to ask this? Still, I decide to be a bit of a pain in the ass. If they are going to mess with my peaceful meal, I can at the very least return the favor.
And to what tradition do you refer?
To be the father of two generations.
Well, that was more succinct than I have formulated the concept.
Why would I want to do that?
It a tradition.
It is one in your family?
No.
Is there anyone here, other than Dido, who has this as a tradition in her family?
Lyn raises her hand. Shit. Well, OK, if that is the case, it might not be a good part of Lyn’s life. Maybe she will be an advocate for not carrying the tradition forward.
Since you have this experience in your life, tell me, do you think it is a good thing or a tradition that should end?
Lyn is crying. OK, so this is getting worse as each minute passes. All I can do now is wait for the answer. Having asked her, I can’t blow her off.
I want to take a bite of food before it gets cold, but even that will be rude. I just wait. And then finally…
It OK, Sir, you healthy and not die soon.
I didn’t expect that, don’t know what to make of it, and am really not looking forward to any attempt at fulfilling the tradition. Si2x’s question still hangs in the air, unanswered.
There are a number of reasons why I am not inclined to support the intention to pursue what has tonight been called a tradition. First, it presumes that my daughters will want me to father their children. If they do not want me to do so, it would be rape. Second, such a practice can result in birth defects. Third, no one can predict one’s health or life span, and the earliest such a tradition might be even started is no less than thirteen years from now.
Si2x is confused. Why thirteen years? There is Shara and Dido, and Gladies and May!
But, sweetheart, I am not the father of Dido and May. The tradition you reference requires fathering children from your own daughters. So, thirteen years from now a daughter of mine would have to want me to father her daughter. I don’t see that happening.
Oh! OK.
I am hopeful that, at least for tonight, we have come to the end of the matter which is creating ever more headaches for me.
The rest of supper is subdued and peaceful. But, once again, I have rained on a parade. For them, it has been one thing after another whereby I have shown disapproval or acted in a disruptive way due to their actions. No one is joyful.
Mel, preoccupied as she might be, has decided I need some rum. In my hands is a rocks glass filled with ice and a generous amount of Dark Tanduay.
I am settling into an easy chair, a truly comfortable one that comes from Dorchester, when I am bugged by the comment Lyn made tonight. I have studiously avoided learning about her early history as she didn’t seem inclined to want to share it with me. But, I really think the time has come. I need clarity as to her comments tonight.
She has read my mind. I was just about to go find her and she is here by my side. There is a faraway look in her eyes, but her hand reaches out and caresses mine. I do what I have seen the girls do, oh so often, and purse my lips towards the chair by me. She smiles a little, nods, and sits and, as she does, releases air from her chest in one long sigh.
My love, it has been a year and a half since we first met. I fell in love with you before I could imagine what life would be like for me here. I have never, Lyn, never regretted that, and I have loved you, intensely, ever since. You didn’t want to share the story of your life with me and I decided to respect that. I never have pried or pushed you to tell me about the days before we met.
I take a couple of sips of the rum before continuing. Lyn sits patiently, waiting for me to continue.
But, my love, tonight I find that I must ask you about that which you have held from me. I need to know about your past. I understand that it will be painful for you, but it seems that I need to know. … I will leave it to you to choose what to tell me. But before you do, do you need a drink? It appears that Mel felt I needed one. Maybe you do too.
I gather she doesn’t, as she straightens up in the chair, leaning back just a bit, holding onto the arms of the chair, closes her eyes, and prepares to speak. There is a sense of deep regret in her voice as it all begins to unfold.
My Lola1’s her husband, Alfonso, came here in 1953 from Bohol. Two years later, she came with her parents, in 1955, when she was ten. Alfonso had been a fisher in Bohol, but he was given two hectares to farm here. My Nanay says he was a hard worker and the farm was very successful. It grew to eight hectares! He had many workers.
Lyn pauses, as if remembering tales she has been told years ago, gathering them up before retelling them.
He had many children. There were nine of them from his first wife, but she died in childbirth on the ninth one. That is when he married my Lola in 1968. She was twenty-three then. She had five more children for him. There were fourteen of them, eleven girls and three boys, and they spanned many decades. My mother was her second. She was born in 1970. Lola had three more, but she died in the last childbirth in 1974. So I not alive then.
Once again Lyn stops.
Sweetheart are you sure you don’t want anything to drink?
Maybe a taste of your rum?
She earns a smile from me and I hand her the glass. She takes a sip and, still holding on to the glass, continues.
Alfonso was an important man. But he was also a drunk and mean. My Nanay say the older kids told her that when my Lola was alive, she didn’t let him hit the children, but he hit her, often and hard. Some say it was his beatings that killed her and not the childbirth. Even when Lola was alive, because there were too many children Alfonso not allow some of his daughters to marry. Those daughters must take care of the other children. The oldest three, yes, they gone. But not the younger ones.
She takes another sip of the rum.
There was only one boy from the first wife. Eight were girls. Three married and were gone but five remained. My Lola had three daughters and two boys. When Lola die Alfonso not marry again. He take every daughter still there to his bed when she old enough for children. Every one of the remaining girls. All eight girls, including my ’Nay when she was 14. ’Nay had four children by Alfonso. I am the oldest of her four. Each of the eight had at least three. Two had four and one had six! Twenty-nine children from his own daughters
She stops for another drink.
As soon as they were old enough to work, he had them working the farm just like his sons and the boys who married his three oldest daughters and the girls when they weren’t heavy with children. More and more he drank. The more he drank the meaner he was. He hit us hard and often. The girls who were born of his daughters who were older than me, had to come to his bed. There was no choice. He was very sick by then. Maybe from the drink. It was an ugly time and I do not like to think about it. He die when I am ten. There no will, so each of us get an equal share of the eight hectares. But there are more than forty of us by then! My share is two thousand square meters. When I leave six years later at age sixteen, I sell all to one of the boys for ten pesos per square. I put it away, but a week later someone steal it from me.
She takes another drink and hands me the glass.
You have good English. Were you able to attend school?
Yes and I study hard because it always my plan as a little one to get an education so I can run away.
With all you know, why did you say it is OK for me to follow that tradition?
You not mean. You not a drunk. You not force anyone, I am sure of that, so it is OK.
If Alfonso hadn’t died he would have taken you?
Yes, I sure of it. He say that.
Where is your mother?
And now the tears flow.
She dead. She die age twenty-four. She do suicide. Priest say she goes to hell. I tell the Priest he can go to hell. I never go to church again.
And now I see why there was no one to invite. At least no one she wants to invite. I can also see why she is never one to attend church.
All Lyn wants to be, is a good parent… but she has never seen a good parent. At least not one who didn’t get beaten or commit suicide.
In a way, having all these girls must remind her of the bad shit she left behind. Why is she OK with it? I guess I might as well ask.
Lyn, you lived through hell with a man who had many women in his bed. Why are you OK with me doing the same thing?
She looks at me, stunned, as if I had kicked her.
It not the same! You never make anyone do what they not want to do. Never! You not a drunk. You not mean and hit. It not the same!
So I may see the similarity but she doesn’t. To her, this is worlds different.
Is there anything else I need to know?
No, that all.
Yes, and it is quite enough.
Do you want to just sit for a bit? Maybe have a bit more rum?
No, I really want to get back to our daughter.
OK, sweetheart. Thank you.
Lyn gets up, we kiss and she walks off, having just relived a nightmare.
The concept of large families to farm land is not new. It is a worldwide reality. Farm cultures support large families. Alfonso seems to have been a mean, greedy, drunk, but that may be, in a way, only an extreme version of a norm, not a total aberration. There must also have been a driven and hard working side of him to succeed at acquiring the eight hectares. It didn’t just fall into his lap.
I am not trying to build a case for the guy. It seems he was a first class asshole.
In a way, what Lyn told me may explain how she was able to adjust to life with me and my budget faster than the others. As a child, she was not dirt poor. She was beaten, that is clear, and she lived in fear. Her childhood was a nightmare, but they were not poor.
Economics, baby, economics. The economics of farm labor. The economics of supporting the maintenance of large groups. It’s all economics. Good shit, bad shit, it makes no difference, it still is driven by economics.
Mel wanders in, sees my glass needs refreshing and takes care of it. That done, she sits down and asks, Why was Lyn crying?
She was telling me about her childhood. It was a hundred times worse than yours.
Truly?
Yes, Mel, truly and that is all I will ever say about it. And don’t you go prying about it. Lyn deserves her privacy. Mel, will you join me tonight?
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1 - Grandmother
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