If not clarity then consideration.
There are ants and they bite. I have huge welts on me. I itch. But I am not the only one. Emelyn does too, though she tells me, you just get used to it after a while. How? Oh God, this is a miserable existence.
Emelyn finds something she calls kangkung on the side of a field. She spied a tree that she says is called malunggay. She hacked off a branch and drags it back to our hut.
She spends two pesos for a little salt and four peso for a flavoring packet of some type. She buys half a kilo of rice, I guess that's about a pound. With the charcoal fire she is making soup and then she will make the rice. We will finally eat. It won't be much. But for the first time in a whole day, there will be something to eat!
The soup is a thin broth with greens. Emelyn puts the rice in a bowl and we pour the broth and greens over the rice. It is a protein-free meal with damned little vegetable but, it is food and I don't care what it tastes like. I eat it.
I am filthy. I feel like shit. I look across the three or four feet of space between us. She is getting ready to lie down and rest. I ask her if this is life at its worst. Does it get better? She just looks at me.
She is quiet for a long time. And then, Sarah, this is life every day. It can get far worse. It never really gets better for long. Maybe for a few days we have more food. Maybe we get lucky with work and can have some chicken. But most, if we have a good day, we eat the dry fish. We like it, the dry fish. And it not cost too much. But this is our life before Ronald. This is what you want to send me back to. Maybe if I don't love him and take care of him, maybe he should do it. But how I not love the man who love me and take care of my daughters and me? How I do that? How I not care for him? How I not do anything and everything he want? I do. He knows this and he loves me too. He say to me, 'Ok now you are safe.' He not lie to me. I not lie to him. Why you want to make him leave me? Why you make him leave my girls? Why? They love him too. They always be good to him. He good to them. They in school today, not on their backs for pesos. Why you want to make that happen? Why?
I want to say that he is exploiting them but, if he doesn't what is the option? None? Is it really an option to live in misery, or to be exploited, and live well and be happy? Is that really what I am fighting them about? Is that why Dad, said, 'keep an open mind' in the email? Is he right? Am I trying to impose first world rules and values in a place where it has no real relevance?
Have I made a horrible mistake?
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Melissa not understand why I love you. She say she love you as her Lolo1 but not understand how I be your girlfriend. She hug me tonight like I am going to be patay2. She nice. I like her. But she not understand us.
Yeh, that sums it up nicely. So, Jonalyn, you get the IUD?
Oo. Mother take us and Pearl to the doctor. She a kwak-kwak but, does this and no questions.
Good.
I have not been feeling very horny today. I do feel the desire of loving closeness for Jonalyn at the present. I want to touch her. To make her happy. To give her body wings of happiness. But I don't need anything else for myself. I am just happy to bring her off tonight.
I checked about the IUD only because it takes one concern off the table, not because it is a guaranty that it will be needed.
Jonalyn's (and Joriz's) eyes just look right through you. There is this perceiving clarity that you feel moving from their gaze deep into you. I touch Jonalyn's cheek, her jawline. My fingers move over lips that part, to lick, nibble, suck.
We kiss. It is such a simple thing to do. A kiss can be a meaningless gesture. Your aged aunt placing a dry press of withered lips on your cheek. Or, like now, something that seems to defy time and barriers of membranes of bodies, creating one living creature, as we are bound together by breath, by heartbeat and by entangled limbs. I am lost in Jonalyn's young arms, legs, lips and hair, as it surrounds us.
We roll around on the mattress in this loving and confused state, breathing and being... being, existing for the other. Needing the other, being the other. How can I sever myself from myself? She is part of me now and I, I am part of her.
There has been no foreplay. But she finds my cock hard and, though we have not untangled once, I find my way inside her, inside us.
Oh, the miracle of that connection. Her body heating mine in the most intimate of ways. The wetness that both lubricates and seals us, connects us, pushing away any vestige of air or space between us.
We move in a rocking motion, entwined, still kissing, hands still searching. This is a place that exists outside the realm of the everyday world. This is a place of unity. But it is being thrown into turmoil by a rising need inside me to drive into Jonalyn and plant the seed that most assuredly will not grow.
What my mind knows is meaningless to my body's desires. I start ramming into her. Her soft responses turn in an instant to an understanding, and demand completion. I am rock hard. My body, insensitive to the quietness of just moments ago, only wants to complete, to dominate, to cum.
It takes not much time. We were primed, and now as her body is wracked in a bliss, a cum, that sends powerful signals to my gonads, my cum spurts into her. Hot cum in a hot cunt.
Mummm good tonight! I think you are happy Ronald.
I am happy to be with you tonight.
Good. Can we just sleep now? I not need a shower.
Yeh, sounds good to me.
She kisses me before leaving the room this morning. She calls me her asawa. It means her husband. It feels like that to me too. Good! I feel good, and then, in a flash, I don't, as my mind smacks into worry about my daughter. Damn. I get up to shower and dress.
There, as usual, Elvie sits, with Aubrey, coffee in hand. My coffee waiting for me. A breakfast to consume. How do you know every day when I will be coming out of the shower?
I wait for the sound of the water pipe. On school days, you shower after the girls leave. No one else showers in the morning like you do.
Well, OK. That is simple enough.
I have news for you about Emelyn and your daughter. Jenny leave to get them on the 220 now.
Oh? Everything OK?
Don't know. Text message say, 'com na.'
Anything else?
Hehe, yes. Joriz stop me before she leave today. She say, 'Tell Ron, I ready tonight!' I tell her she rude but, I tell you anyway. Also Pearl say she get text from Judith. Judith want to come and see her. Pearl asks for permission from you. I tell her it OK with you.
Good. Next?
The top soil come this morning. May I hire labor to move it where I want?
Cost?
Two hundred pesos a day for labor. I want two laborers for one day.
OK.
Poppop? Is that under five dollars a day for each?
Yes.
How do they live on that?
Poorly but, ask your mother how many pesos a day she was living on these last two days. I bet it was far less.
Oh!
Poppop, do you really love Jonalyn?
Ah, Aubrey! You think I am abusing her? Or maybe using her in an underage prostitution sort of way and that she is deluded in thinking I love her? Maybe I will never convince you of this until I die. But at my funeral, I expect there to be nine adult women. And the children there will be my kids, siblings to your mother, your aunts and uncles. And in that group of nine, will be Jonalyn and Elvie. And so as I am buried, if you come to see my body laid into the ground, you will finally answer that question you have now. Child, these women and girls are my loves. It is improbable. But it is not impossible and it is the truth. ... Anything else Elvie?
Wala pa.3 Wait until the two return.
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I am so confused. All my life I am told that women and men are equal in all regards, but that men have been repressing women for centuries. They do it through law, through bureaucracy, through custom and religion, through messaging via advertising, social media and other media, and through sex. The news at home is filled with news about how older men prey on young women and girls, whose lives are ruined in the process and how a few are saved by law enforcement and the caring of selfless individuals. I mean, that is what we all believe to be true. I believe it to be true!
And here I stand next to Elvie, who counts herself to be one of the luckiest girls in the Philippines. She and Jonalyn and the others are poster girls for all that is wrong and fucked up and they need to be saved... but what would I be saving them from? I mean, take a step back from the messaging that I believe is true and ... is it? Is it true? Or is it propaganda no less than the propaganda that it complains about?
I know a little family history. Poppop's grandmother married her husband when she was fifteen. I asked Mom about that. Wasn't that evil? She shrugged and said it was normal then, common. So why was it OK then, and not evil based on values at the time, and evil now, wherever it exists? It isn't making sense!
It really doesn't make sense standing next to Elvie. She is two years older than great-great grandmom was when she got married. Jonalyn is only one year younger. Is everything I have been told and taught a lie? Is it all political propaganda of a Woman's movement that exists, and has taken power, in the first world and is being forced onto the third world?
I mean, is this like some SciFi crazy thing where everything we think is true is a lie? I don't think I can ask Mom. She is a true believer.
I don't think I can ask Poppop. I sort of know what he thinks but, he is biased. Is there anyone who isn't biased? I can't think of a single person who isn't brainwashed like I think I have been and who isn't like Poppop.
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Motorcycles, dogs, roosters, loud music, loud voices. They surround us and never seem to stop. It is loud twenty-four hours a day. It is a din of noise that invades even the most private moments. You may be alone but, solitude evades you. You share moments with all around you. Emelyn seems not to notice or, if she does, and maybe that's more the case, she accepts it as simply part of life. A connected, if miserable, existence where all participate together and struggle alone.
The sun has been up for close to four hours and so have we. Emelyn is trying to eke out a few pesos for us. She does not allow me to do this as it would cause a furor if they see a white woman working in such a manner. It would upset the perceived order of the universe, from what Emelyn has told me.
I ask her how she met Susan. It turns out Susan lived here too before her aunt took her in. They remained friends. Susan talked to her about Dad and worked to get her and Ros nice dresses so that they might not be embarrassed to meet him at the school. Ros's and her meeting Dad was a setup from the get go. She knew just what would happen if they were successful. Dad didn't go looking for them, they wanted him. It matches what he told me the other night. Maybe I understand how truthful he was about that now.
Whatever I think of Dad, he isn't a predator. He is the prey. It is a concept I am having some problems integrating into my understanding of human relations. But I don't see them as gold diggers. It's not evil. They don't want to hurt him or bleed him dry. They want to get on the boat with him. They are survivors, maybe?
I hear a motor stop outside.
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The laborers are here and are moving dirt by a wheelbarrow we found in a shed. Elvie is directing the operation. Susan went to the bakery early this morning, before the girls went to school. Ros is cooking a lunch meal. Aubrey is just standing back and watching all the action. She sees me and walks over. They work so hard!
Hey for these guys this is good money.
No, I mean all the women here. It isn't that none are lazy. It is more than that. They work really hard.
Aubrey, this is their home and they are taking care of it. They are proud that it is theirs.
But it isn't. It is yours.
And what is mine is theirs. I can't legally marry all, so I marry none and each understands that. They also understand that they are equal in all I have and will leave behind. This is theirs.
So they are here with you to profit?
No more than when a person gets married in the US they will inherit too. What makes that any different?
But if they are equals when they are married, Poppop, then it isn't for profit.
And so now you have turned love and marriage into an economic contract where only those of equal worth may become a couple? That sounds like a horrible idea and a mean spirited way to live. And what do you do with Cinderella? Do you burn the book as un-PC? Aubrey, my economic value is a freak result of the chance that I was born in a certain place and is not an indication of my worth as a person. The same is true for these gals. Are we to build a wall between us and say, don't cross? Economic disparity is a fact of life. The need to find love is another. You can make all the arguments you like about how it seems wrong in either direction but, it is simply the way life is. It is the way we all survive in the world.
I see it. I feel it here very strongly. It's just that all my life I have been told it is wrong.
Yeh and at one time people believed in witches, burning them at the stake for all their wickedness. Always beware of the arbiters of existential right and wrong. They always have an agenda.
Aubrey looks at me, smiles a wan smile. She shakes her head and looks at me, her head cocked a little. I think I am learning that. Poppop, do you understand how scary it is to start to believe that? I mean, can I trust anything I have been taught? What is real and what is a slogan, a campaign? How can I know?
It is probably too soon for you to sort it out but, my best guess is to ask yourself 'cui bono.' That's Latin for 'Who benefits?' If all parties benefit, then it is easier to trust. If only one side benefits, then you should at the very least cast a queer glance at the proposition.
Poppop, no one uses the word queer like that anymore!
Ah, and I gather you want to rename the Gay Nineties to something else, too? Aubrey, don't let the fashion police run your life.
So this cui bono thing. Does it always work?
No. Of course not. For instance, women should always have the right to vote and should not be treated as chattel. That means property, dear. So the woman's rights movement was designed to benefit women more than men and anyone who argues that it is good to keep women as chattel, in my opinion, is a loon. But the movement tied up early on with the temperance movement, think Carrie Nation, which was an evil thing and it infused into the woman's movement early on a powerful, anti-normative male, aggressive ethic that went to ground for a bit during the great depression and WWII, and then emerged and morphed into the women's movement of the 1960s. The strident movement to tie normative sexual behavior between consenting individuals to ages where the women could not marry until older in life, or even engage in sex, changes the entire social fabric of a nation and has nothing to do with emancipation. It has far more to do with control. And yes, maybe it is good for those women in that culture. I am not going to argue that. But it doesn't have a place as a sane policy in much of the world. In the wake of the movement, we have what we have now. And honey, it's a mess.
Oh, Poppop, my head hurts!
Yeh, like I said, it's a mess.
Poppop! It's Mom!
And through the gate come Jenny, Emelyn and Sarah. The latter two look like they need a good hosing down. Jenny and Emelyn pull Sarah into the washroom. I hear squeals and I can only assume that Emelyn is stripping everything off herself while Jenny does the same to Sarah, following which a hose is turned on the two. A cold water fire hose shower, as it were.
Following which, I see flashes of flesh as they run into the house proper and, most likely up, the stairs.
Well, she is back. What happens next is the question.
Ros tugs on my arm. It's time for a driving lesson.
1 - Grandfather. [Pronounced: low-LOW].
2 - Dead. [Pronouncd: pah-TIE].
3 - Nothing yet. [Pronounced: wa-LAH PAH; all 'a's are soft].