“Miss Chapati Queens” is part of a fiction manuscript titled The F.L.I.P Show, an interconnected collection of stories about the Filipino American community on the East Coast. The Philippines is an archipelago of 175 languages and/or dialects. Most of us are at least bilingual. In my household alone, five major Filipino languages, including English, are spoken. As a former colony of the United States, the Philippines has been using English as a lingua franca—the language of power, and of the media and the government—for over a hundred years, further complicating its multilingual tradition.
Although set in Queens, “Miss Chapati Queens” explores Filipino multilingualism. The protagonist, Rosario, is half-Indian, half-Filipino but grew up with a Filipino mother, and thus understands and speaks Tagalog. Her voyage into becoming more “Indian” coincides with her decision to join a beauty contest called Miss Chapati Queens. There are almost four million Filipinos in the U.S., some of whom are of mixed heritage, like the character in this story. These households reflect the multilingual backgrounds of the Filipino people. I speak English, Filipino (Tagalog), and Spanish, but understand Bicolano and Chabacano (language of my maternal heritage from Zamboanga City, a former Spanish port).
***
I love henna.
I love moments of henna. The dark spirals of dots around my knuckles. Dancing circles on my palms that never break, never end, like long, long birthmarks, full of stories, full of histories, full of so many different adventures true and true. I love sitting in front of the mirror, and showing off my henna to this girl in front of me. She tells me, transform yourself, be anything you can be, change and be counted.
And I change. (I have to close the door because my mother might walk in on me and think I have really gone crazy.)
These patterns on my hands, and the way I move my hands make me think of Diva.
Diva Salaam.
I am Diva Salaam, the great- great- great- great- granddaughter of the great goddess with four giant arms, Diva. From the spirits of Gin Bombay, from the mysterious spice of Hari Krishna, Hari Hari. Born amid elephant wars, spice wars, opium wars, star wars, and at age of three months, dipped in the Indian Ocean for the blessing from the five-armed Guru, the hung-god of the seven seas. I rode seahorses at six. Flying carpets at seven, balancing myself through one thousand and one nights. A year later my parents died, trampled by our white elephant pets, and I was orphaned, left to become youngest peasant in Del-hee. It must be because I have three dots on my face that a family took me in and renamed me Hindi-rella, and turned me into a maid. So the story goes, my goddess ancestor the great Diva with four great arms appeared to me, waving one arm north, one south, and the rest, all around, swirling stars and light all over, turning the room to gold and silver, the dust to spices of all kinds: cilantro, saffron, tomato chutney, curry seasoning mix, turning me into a princess at midnight. She said, go, Hindirella, go to the palace and attend the great party of Buddha, the king, for his son, Prince Hashish, of the Kingdom of Guru, he la he la ha la la hey, and she made that funny movement with her neck, and her eyes went from side to side, like this. To make a long story short, Hashish, the prince came to marry me one day, and from then on, I fulfilled the prophecy. Diva Salaam, Queen of Gin Bombay.
ROSARRRRRRIOOOOO!!!
My mother.
She bangs and bangs the plate with the head of a spoon to call me for dinner. All Filipinos are loud, but especially her. The cracks on the walls of our house are from her constant yelling of my name. The cracks on the plates are, from her spoons.
O-OOOOOOO, I scream back, palms cupping my face. Goodbye, Diva.
*
My name is Rosario Batong-bato.
Hard to say, and I don’t look like a Rosario. That’s why it’s so easy to make up stories, because I don’t even believe in my own. I don’t have a middle name because I’m using my mother’s last name. My mother is from the Philippines. That’s where we’re from, everything we are, everything we eat. I grew up with her. In Queens. Rosario Batong-Bato. Bah-tung, Bah-tow. That name doesn’t sound like it is mine. For many, many years, until she got tired, my mother used to lecture me about our last name:
“Batong-bato! Sayee right. Buh-tong, buh-toh! Bato! That means stone in our language. You’re related to all the bato in all the islands of the Philippines and god knows there are so many of them. Batong-bakal. Stoned-steel. Batong-bayan. Stoned-country. And you Batong-bato. Stoned-stone.”
Her voice always seems like it’s coming from the deepest part of a rock.
I understand Tagalog perfectly, every intonation, every movement. Even the silences I understand. My mother speaks it to herself all the time, and with me, even more. She said we have to have a secret language, because in America it’s important to know another language. So she taught me to speak Tagalog. A language I can speak but not read. Nobody in school knows I have this secret language. As soon as I leave the house, I leave my secrets, too.
All my seventeen years, when I’m with my mother, everybody looks at us strangely. They ask if she’s my nanny. She’s short and very dark, my exact opposite. Now that she’s balding, our features are even farther apart.
She looks up when I talk to her, and I wonder, I wonder what she sees.
I look Indian, you see.
My father is Indian. I have never met him. I tell people many things about him: he’s dead, he’s in India, he’s working abroad. I’m not lying. Since I don’t know his whereabouts, I don’t really know what to say. I used to think my father looked like that what’s his name that beheaded Indian writer that I saw on TV once—Rush, Rush, Rushmore.
I don’t speak Hindi, the language of India, you know? My mother doesn’t understand a word of Hindi, except perhaps for a word she says all the time while she makes a little circle with her fingers, Mula, Mula!
I ask her if she knows a few words in Hindi, and she tells me, Hindi in Tagalog means, Noh.
No?
Noh, go figurit!
*
Mother always says my father was never there. Then she continues with, he’s a frick. All my life I wonder what that word means, frick. She mispronounces a lot of words in English, especially words that start with a P. She can’t tell the difference between “in” and “on.” And many other things. Every night she tells me: kill the light on your room. I never correct her. I’m not good at English either, thanks to her. But I notice the little mistakes she makes. Every morning she sings a Streisand song in her own way, saying, Feefall, feefall who need Feefall. Sometimes I understand her, sometimes I don’t, so one day I asked, “When you talk about my father do you mean he’s a prick or a freak, Ma?”
“Wha?”
“Prick or Freak, which one?”
“Frick. Frick. Frick! Your father wassa frick!”
“Oh-okay.”
Her accent sounds like it comes from the deepest part of a rock.
*
“Hoy Rosario, magpunta ka rito!”
My mother rarely speaks English to me.
She’s Visayan, from the middle islands of the Philippines, but she speaks to me in Tagalog. She tells me many things about her people. Like how Visayans are warriors. But they are warriors who lost. They were known for beheading Magellan, you know, Magellan? She tells me they only named everything after that Spaniard. Like what? I ask her. Like this bank in Roosevelt Avenue, she says. A bank on Roosevelt, Ma? My mother doesn’t look like she can be easily colonized but I guess her ancestors were different. They couldn’t get rid of the Spanish colonizers. They were too nice and friendly soon they were walking on their knees in Christian churches. Because of them, the whole country was colonized.
If India colonized the Philippines, I would be very happy.
Ma?
What?
Tell me about Dad?
Which Dad? Your Dad, my dad?
Grandpa is dead, Ma.
So is yours.
Dad is dead?
In my mind.
Oh. What’s his last name again?
I don’t know. Patis. No. Papel. No. Ah, Pa. . .tel! Patel! Yes, Oo, Patel. Patel-patel-pa—
MA, is that a double L with an E?
No, it’s a double T with an E.
Not. Patel. One P as in Peter. One A. One T as in Tom. One E. One L. Patel, so simple. Rajesh Patel, according to the Queens yellow pages, the most common Indian name in the universe.
*
Tuesday, 11:00 p.m.
“Sleepless named Desire: A Chant”
I desire to be Indian.
I desire to feel inside this face I see outside.
I desire to taste the food I long for, but know nothing about.
I desire to understand with my heart what’s been denied of me all my life.
I desire to be Diva Salaam.
I desire to be Indian.
I desire to be Indian I desire to feel inside this face I see outside I desire to taste the food I long for, but know nothing about I desire to understand with my heart what’s been denied of me all my life I desire to be Diva Salaam I desire to be Indian.
I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian I desire to be Indian
IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian IdesiretobeIndian
“OY!!! SLEEP NA!!!”
“Yes, Ma. Goodnight.”
“Stop talking to yourself! Kill the light on your room.”
*
I desire to be Indian. When I look in the mirror and crave for tinola, I think, stop, think of something else, not Filipino soup. Think of something Indian. Something Indian. Nothing comes up in my mind. I think of those women in Queens who wear those glamorous, colorful, beaded long dresses, but I can’t see myself in one. I have never worn the delicate Filipina butterfly sleeve dress, afraid it might send me afloat. At festivals, I get these looks all the time when I’m with my mother. To be in butterfly sleeves will not help my case. To be in a Sari will not help my mother’s. What if I get stopped in the street by some Indians because they think I’m one of them, and asked for directions, in their native Hindi, what do I say: Hindi in Tagalog means “No, go figure?” I don’t think so.
I desire to be Indian, yes. Something inside of me tells me the time has come to look. The blood of my father, perhaps. Finally getting warm. Soon to boil. This father I have never met, who probably still lives in the Philippines, still getting Filipinas pregnant to bring more children like me to this world.
“I’M INDIAN TOO,” my first boyfriend proudly declared to me when I was fifteen. He’s blond, with gray eyes. I had only seen dark Indians, I have never seen them that light skinned. Maybe they mixed with white people.
“I AM Indian,” I said to him, as if in a competition for who was more Indian.
He was the first boy who kissed me, the first one I allowed, and I did that because he told me he was Indian and I wanted to kiss an Indian boy. In my school there were no Indians. A lot of other types, mostly smart Chinese, but no Indians, dumb or smart. I saw that word at the tip of his tongue, I wanted to pull it out with my lips, taste it, find out the secrets, watch it leave a mark on my lips.
I-N-D-I-A-N.
“I may not look Indian, that’s because it was my great- grandfather who was pure Indian,” he said.
Wow, like my father, I thought, pure Indian, Indian so pure, his blood runs through me like pure, pure silk, made in India.
“My father grew up in the rez,” he said.
The rez, a city in India, perhaps as big as Bombay? “Where is rez?”
“Alabama.”
“Indians in Alabama?”
“We are like all over the country, okay?” he said, looking at me like I was really dumb.
I may not know many things, but I’m not dumb. “ There are a lot of us?” I ask
“Millions. Which tribe are you?”
“Tribe?”
“Tribe, yeah, like I’m Navajo.”
Mabaho? I thought, that was my first Filipino word. It meant smelly. He’s smelly, he said. I used to say that word all the time when I was a little girl. My mother would giggle when I said Tagalog words. Mabaho, I remember perfectly. I would go to the toilet and start screaming, mabaho, mabaho. I was really scared by my mother would roll on the floor laughing. Ma, it’s mabaho, mabaho. I remember tying that word with flushing, the first time I learned how to flush the toilet was the same time I learned to say, mabaho.
I thought he was cool. He was from a tribe. I would kiss him to pull out the pieces of that tribe from his mouth, the tribe that was in our blood, the dark grandfather of his that was so much like my father, the bill collector who sent himself to medical school in Manila, my Rajesh Patel boyfriend. “Kiss me,.” I begged.
He was the first boy I ever kissed. But he was not the first Indian. I soon learned that there were different kinds of Indians, one of which was me, and the others what all these white boys claimed to be mixed with. Oh, Goddess Diva, was I upset!
Don’t touch me! You fake! Why don’t you make a reservation at your rez, and go find yourself some other Indian girl you can fool around with, Tonto! I learned that he was no American Indian at all. He wanted to kiss an Indian as much as I wanted to kiss an Indian. But the two Indians in our heads were two different Indians.
I desire to be Indian, yes. It’s been two years since I have started feeling this way, and now the desire has grown even more. My heart is telling me so.
*
Indianness rings in the ears, like golden bangles around a wrist.
“How do you say hello in Hindi?” I ask the guy in the Indian store.
“Don’t you know?” he asked back.
“No.”
“Halo-Hawaryu.”
“Okay,” I say, and walk away. Hawarrrr-you?
*
We have our moments, my mother and I. Sometimes she is the coolest person in the world.
“Tell me again,”. I asked.
She’s ironing our clothes, standing there, a towel wrapped around her waste, sweating, half-dazed. A towel turbaned around her long, grayish hair.
Not again.
Again.
Okay.
But add more information this time, Ma, please.
I told you to stop chewing the hem of your dress.
I can’t help it, Ma. I’m excited.
Go grab something to eat.
Tell me Ma.
Your dress is not food.
Please?
All right.
Start when you asked him for money.
Mother swore Mula was an Indian word.
My father was this Indian man who went to medical school in Manila, in the same area where my mother was a college student. My mother lived in a dormitory, and like the entire country, was heavily plotting to leave. By hook or by crook, she used to say all the time after every sentence. I will go to the Sstates, by hook or by crook.
Then she met this Indian man, Rajesh, who was tall, very tall, always wearing white, hairy, very hairy. She described his hair to me like she’s describing a gorilla. Then she says, he smells Boom-bye all over. That’s the term she uses, which I have stopped using, Boom-bye. Filipinos call Indians Boom-bye. The first time I learned this was at a Filipino store. A Filipina woman turned the aisle, suddenly saw me and screamed, Ay, Boom-bye! She dropped a dozen eggs on the floor.
My mother found out that my father was a money-lender, so she talked to him once, made him lunch, and borrowed a hundred pesos from him. She paid him promptly, within a week, with the same money she borrowed, only because she wanted to gain his confidence. She borrowed money again, two hundred pesos, and then spent only half of it. She realized the longer it took to pay him, the more interest the money gained. Well, that was the whole point. She paid him back, fifty pesos more. T They struck a friendship, a friendship made of pesos, and occasional free lunches. She knew what she was doing the whole time. He was her special friend, a friend so special he would help her pay for her visa application to the States.
Which he did. He was more than willing to help, but this time he asked for a collateral, like jewelry. It was two thousand pesos. She took a part time job doing laundry for her dorm-mates, to pay him back, and to try to get her watch and necklace back. He kept the necklace, and a hundred pesos profit. He told her, I’m paying my way way through Medical school, just the way you are sending yourself through college. It’s only fair.
For the first time, she looked at his face and found something good to say about him, You will make a good doctor, Raj, you are so generous, she told him. You are easy to like. You’re a good Boom-bye. She used to tell me, always whispering when she did, “You know, you get used to their smell after a while. And you, my darling, I never fed you any of that spicy stuff because I wanted you to smell like your mother, like Ivory soap. But your father, my god, your father smelled like he showered in vinegar and pepper.”
When her visa got approved, she borrowed money from him again, this time to buy her plane ticket, but she didn’t tell him she was leaving. But he found out, guess from whom, she asked me. Filipinos! Ah, you can’t trust them Filipinos. Don’t surround yourself with Filipinos. All they know is gossip. They gossip. My dorm-mates told Raj I was leaving. After I washed their dirty underwear, they turned around and gossiped on me!
And my father found out, he got drunk and went to see her one rainy night. He told her he couldn’t believe he lied to her. He told her he liked her. He was very drunk. My mother said to me, Ah, those poor Boom-byes are not allowed to drink because of their religion, you know. A drunk Boom-bye is an honest Boom-bye. So I felt so bad for Raj.
That night, between my mother’s pity and my father’s lust, between the money she owed him, and his discovery of the truth, I was conceived.
When my mother left, I was inside of her. And when she realized she was pregnant, she tried to tell him by writing letters, but she couldn’t find him anymore. Her dorm-mates ignored her letters as well. She never heard from Rajesh Patel, this Indian money-lender in Manila, this mMedical student, this father of mine, Rajesh Patel, the most common Indian name in the Queens yellow pages.
*
Chismis is the most famous Filipino word. Making chismis is the most important cultural activity. It is when the worst of the Filipino comes out. Filipinos, like other people, can be very wicked. They can be wicked to people who are not like them. They can be wicked to people who are not normal, and people who are too normal, people who are not like themselves. Amongst Filipino, sometimes it’s perfectly acceptable to talk about other people, especially if it’s behind their backs.
My mother and I went to a Filipino restaurant. She left me inside and went to get money from the bank next door. While I waited for her, two Filipino women came in and sat at the next table. How did I know I was about to become their appetizer? Simple, they both looked at me once, for as long as they could stare, and back at each other, and made faces. With her protruding lips and bulging eyes, the woman warned the other not to look anymore because she was about to make chismis. For Filipinos, the language of chismis must be kept to the native tongue, in their case, Tagalog.
Oy, tingnan mo yon.
Sino yan?
Anak ni Metring.
Talaga?
Oo!
Ba’t ganyan ang hitsura? Mukhang bumbay, sigurado ka?
Oo naman, matagal ko nang kilala si Metring no?
Magandang bata, pero Bumbay!
Kawawa naman, walang tatay yan. Bumbay ang tatay niyan.
Talaga? At least magandang bata siya, buti ng bumbay kesa sa maging kamukha ni Metring!
Totoo yan, pagkapanget-panget ng nanay niyan.
Racial upgrade talaga.
Sinabi mo!
O, baka naiintindihan tayo ha?
Hindi!!! Dito na lumaki yan.
The whole time I was listening. Translation:
Oh, look?
Who’s that?
Daughter of Metring.
Really?
Yes!
How come she looks like that? She looks Boom-bye. Are you sure?
Of course, I’ve know Metring for years, no!
Beautiful girl, but Boom-bye!
Poor girl, no father. The father is Boom-bye.
Really? Well, at least she’s pretty. Better to look like Boom-bye than to look like Metring.
That’s true, the mother is soo ugly.
Racial Upgrade!
Tell me about it.
Wait, maybe she can understand us?
No! She grew up here.
Filipinos are wicked. The worst! I sat there shrinking in size. I didn’t know what to say, or do, or where to look. If I gazed at them, would they know I understood? So I put my hands together, tight as my face staring straight through the window, at children playing in the parking lot, not knowing what to do. The two women came to me. I looked at them and tried to smile.
Hi, hija, I’m Mrs. Cruz, and this is Mrs. Rogelia. I’m a very good friend of your mother’s.
I’m a very good friend of your mother’s. I saw my Visayan warrior blood coming out of me. Visayan of the Lapu-Lapu tradition ready to behead the Magellan out of these foul-mouthed women and turn them into mush. So, I said:
E, kong friend kayo ng Mommy ko, baket tinatawag nyo syang panget? Tingnan nyo nga ang mga sarili ninyo sa salamin at sabihin nyo sa ken kung sino ang tunay na panget?
Translation:
Eh, if you’re my Mommy’s friend, why are you calling her ugly? Look at yourselves in the mirror and tell me who’s really ugly?
I got up. I gave them the V finger. Visayan warrior, stay away. I walked out. I thought about what my mother said to me about this gift, the gift of having a secret language.
The secret language people don’t know I possess.
But that was it. The sign. I have to find my own people. People who look like me, people who look at me once and say, You look like you’re craving for chicken Tandoori.
*
I desire to be Indian.
I desire to feel inside this face I see outside.
I desire to taste the food I long for but know nothing about.
I desire to understand with my heart what’s been denied of me all my life.
I desire to be Diva Salaam.
*****
Bino A. Realuyo is the author of The Umbrella Country (novel, Random House/Ballantine Readers Circle, 1999) and The Gods We Worship Live Next Door (poetry, “Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Award”, University of Utah, 2006), and the editor of The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings About New York City (Temple/AAWW, 2000). His literary works have appeared in The Nation, The Kenyon Review, Manoa, New Letters, The Literary Review, and several anthologies. He attended graduate studies at Harvard University with a full fellowship from the Kennedy School of Government. Leaving Manila as a young teen, he has since spent most of his adult life in New York City and in Latin American countries. His website: http://www.binoarealuyo.com/ Follow him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BinoARealuyo