Short Story / The Saint of Difficult Situations (Analysis)
In my life, I have been saved twice from the water: Once, when I was six years old and rescued from an unexpected current in the bay of our village, and again when I was an eleven-year-old passenger on the cargo ship Kioea.
My Uncle Dali saved me the first time.
The second time, it was Sanchie Villaneuva, an alleged half-Chinese prostitute.
Kioea’s twenty allowable passengers included me, my older sister Leila and my mother, Mei-Mei. Before we boarded, the crew explained that their first priority was to import and export goods, so the journey would be slow – two weeks, they estimated – as they made stops in Guam and Hawaii. The twenty of us walked the plank onto the dock dragging our bags and balikbayan boxes behind us, taking a last look at Luzon before we settled into our bunk-cots on the lowest manageable deck, where there were no windows, little space, and only the grinding sounds of the engine pushing us away from the Philippines and toward a place called San Francisco. As the Filipinos claimed their cots and arranged their blankets and pillows, they jabbered on about America – who they were going to stay with, the families that would sponsor them, how they managed to develop American connections and, most of all, how much money they would send back home once they started working.
I immediately crawled to the top cot of the little hard bed in the corner, sunk my head into the corner of my arm and wept so much that I thought my spirit would disappear. I heard my mother’s frustrated sighs and for the first time in my life, I wanted her to ignore me, and as always she did. She focused instead on the big American plans of other Filipinos on board or my older sister’s stories about how the teen-age American boys would love her.
I stopped crying on the afternoon of the fourth day, but not because my spirit disappeared. It was because something had finally become far more interesting than the crook of my arm. Sanchie Villaneuva.
Sanchie was an older woman on the ship who smelled like cheap musk from the sari-sari store and had lips that were painted bright shades of pink, orange or red. Her lips were glossy, like they were ready to plant wet kisses on the cheeks of every man there, although the men probably would have preferred that she didn’t. She spent most of her time smoking cigarettes on the narrow deck just outside the passengers’ cabin. Her voice was rough and hard, like how sandpaper would sound if it could talk. And it wasn’t just how she talked, but what she said – vile curse words, stories about raunchy sex with men, tales about her days as a young firecracker.
From listening to ship gossip, I learned that Sanchie had been to America many times. There were those on the ship, mostly Leila, who insisted that Sanchie was a half-Chinese prostitute.
“Her eyes are slanted like Chinese, but she has the nose of a Filipina,” Leila whispered in Visayan to my mother. “She speaks Cebuano and Tagalog, but she’s too disgusting to be educated. I bet she was a Chinese concubine or a street prostitute in Manila.”
“Tsk-tsk, don’t be crude,” my mother’d say. Then she would look sideways at Sanchie, who would be on the other side of the room on her cot, playing cards alone or reading a European novel.
On the fourth day, I walked onto the deck. It had been my first time outside since the ship left the island, and for a moment I had to orient myself to the concept of endless blue water with nothing else in sight – no towering mountains from neighboring islands, no tiny fishermen casting nets, no brown-skinned children splashing on the banks. There was nothing but growing space between my old life and my new one.
Sanchie was in the corner with her eyes closed, smoking and humming. Her black hair, dried and brittle from endless dyes, blew around her face, barely missing the glowing tip of her cigarette.
“What’s that song you’re humming?” I asked.
Without opening her eyes, she said, in English, “American rock and roll music. Haven’t you ever heard it?”
“A little bit. Tito Manuel has a radio in his sari-sari store and sometimes he plays American music.”
“No radio of your own, eh?”
“No, manang.”
“What a shame.” She took a drag.
“Have you been to America many times?”
“Oh, yes. Many times.”
“What’s it like?”
“Well, batá, I will tell you something. No matter where you go in the world, things are pretty much the same.”
“What you mean, ‘same’?”
“Always some people in charge, always some others who aren’t. Always some people who will help you if they see you stranded in the street, always some who will spit on you. Always some men who love you, always some men who only say they do.”
I looked at her glossy pink lips. “Have a lot of men said they loved you?”
She opened her eyes. “Of course,” she said, glancing around the boat. “Who are you? Where are your parents?”
“My name is Magda. I don’t know where my mama went. Probably with my sister somewhere, talking to the workers.”
“And your papa?”
“I don’t have one.”
She took a long, final drag, said, “Everyone has a papa,” and tossed her cigarette into the Pacific.
“I don’t know him,” I said. “All I know is that he’s an American and his name is David Oslo.”
“David Oslo,” she repeated. “Is that why you cry all the time?”
I looked at my feet. “No.”
“Then why do you cry all the time?”
“I don’t want to go to America.”
“Why? In America, you can find your papa.”
For eleven years I had lived without a father, but the thought of trying to find him had never occurred to me.
“America is too big to find one person,” I said.
Sanchie shook her head. “Not true. You can find anyone in America as long as you have money.”
“Really?”
“Of course, batá. Money is what makes America go round. Money is what makes the world go round, actually. But you probably haven’t learned that yet because you grew up in a poor Filipino barangay.” Sanchie leaned back again and closed her eyes. “Then again, maybe you know it better than you think you do for that very reason.”
“All I know is, I don’t want to go to America.”
“Your mama and your sister certainly do. They do a lot of talking about it. That is your sister, right? The pretty one who thinks I’m a whore?”
I looked at my feet again. “Yes, that’s my sister.”
“She’s too pretty for her own good, I think. Is she half-American too?”
“No. Her papa died before I was born. Before my mama went to Manila and met David Oslo.”
“Was David Oslo a soldier?”
I shrugged.
Sanchie pulled another cigarette from her pack. “I bet he was,” she said. “You look to be about ten years old, so that would’ve been in ’67. I would bet for sure he was a soldier.” She lit the cigarette and took a long drag of it. “I’ve known many soldiers and I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if he got your mama pregnant and then ran off for the hills.”
I frowned.
“But just because he’s a gago doesn’t mean that you are,” she added. “Remember that.”
I nodded. “How come you know lots of soldiers?”
Sanchie narrowed her eyes at me and laughed. “Are you wondering if your sister’s right? Well, you don’t have to worry too much. I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve heard her whisper to your mama, and she was definitely right about me.”
I imagined Sanchie wearing her orange lipstick and lingering around on Manila street corners, taking men down dark alleyways and doing things that I hardly understood.
“Which part is she right about?” I asked. “That you’re half-Chinese or that you’re a prostitute?”
She winked. “Who knows, mestisa? Who knows?”
On the day I left the Philippines, my grandmother gave me a Bible that had been blessed by Father Philippe, the barangay priest. I was reading that Bible on my fifth day on the Kioera when Sanchie bumped my bed with her fist and asked me to keep her company on deck while she smoked a cigarette. When we were outside, she asked if I read anything besides the Bible.
“No,” I said. “I don’t usually read at all, but my Lola gave me that Bible on the day we left. It was blessed by our priest.”
Sanchie reached into the valley between her breasts and pulled out a small silver medallion.
“See this?” she said. “It is St. Eustace, the patron saint of difficult situations. This was blessed by my priest years ago and I have seen more difficult situations than you can count since then.” She released St. Eustace back into her blouse. “I don’t put much faith in blessed things.”
“The saints aren’t supposed to stop bad things from happening to you. They’re supposed to help you survive them.”
“You certainly are a smart little batá, aren’t you? If you’re so smart, how come you want to stay a pinay instead of becoming a true American?”
“I have lots of reasons.”
“Tell me your reasons, and I will fix all of them.”
“I just have one reason. It’s not my barangay.”
“Tell me what you love about your barangay, and I will tell you what to love about America.”
I looked across the wake of the ship, into the empty horizon, and imagined my barangay going on as always, miles and miles on the other side of where I stood.
“One thing I love is the birds,” I said. “They wake me up every morning.”
Sanchie waved away my birds with her hand. “There are plenty of birds in America. What else?”
“The river, where I swim and play.”
“Ay ako. America has swimming pools. They’re much better than the river, and you don’t have to worry about anyone going dookey in the water. Americans don’t allow that kind of filthiness. And if you don’t have a pool of your own, you can pay fifty cents to swim at the park.”
“What about marbles? I play marbles with my best friend Na-Nan every afternoon after school.”
“America has more marbles than any other country in the world, I can promise you that.”
“That’s not what I care about.” I swallowed away a lump of tears.
“Then what?”
“Na-Nan.”
Sanchie nodded. “I understand. I’ve said goodbye to many friends, but there are always new ones right around the corner.”
“They’re not Na-Nan.”
“No, they’re not exactly like Na-Nan. There is only one Na-Nan, after all. But they’ll have their own special things. We all do.”
The tears were threatening their way up my throat, so I decided to change the subject before I started another four-day weeping spell.
“Tell me about all the men who said they loved you,” I said. “On the second day on ship, I heard you tell Mang Juan about a boy who smelled like sardines. Tell me about that one.”
Sanchie laughed.
“Roberto Milos,” she said, staring at the wake as if he were standing on its white curled tips. She met him at a barangay dance when she was twenty years old, she said, and he was the most handsome man there – lots of Spanish blood, with a round nose, pale skin and brown hair to prove it. “The only problem,” Sanchie continued, “was that he smelled of sardines when we met. He asked me to dance and when we did, I smelled fish.”
I crinkled my nose. “Did you still think he was handsome?”
“Of course. After all, a person could never survive in the Philippines if she doesn’t like the smell of fish. Right?”
“Right.”
“By the time our dance was ending, though, he had turned ugly. Have you ever seen someone turn ugly right before your eyes? That is what happened with Roberto Milos. And you know why? Because he only liked to talk about one thing: Roberto Milos.” Sanchie wrapped her arms around my waist and we began to Tango clumsily on the deck. She mimicked Roberto’s voice as we danced. “‘I have a great big house made of concrete, Sanchie. I own a store and have more money than I can spend in a lifetime.’” She stepped back, tugging at the hem of her shirt with her nose upturned. “‘Sanchie, it is so difficult for me. The people of my barangay treat me terribly because I wear expensive American clothes and because I have so much Spanish blood that I don’t look pinoy. If only I weren’t so rich. If only I weren’t so handsome. My life would be so much easier.’” She put the back of her hand to her forehead.
I giggled.
When she leaned back onto the corner railings and lit a cigarette, smiling at her own amusement, I knew she was back to being herself.
“You know what I told him?” she said. “When the dance was over, I said, ‘You may have all those things, Roberto Milos, but you still smell like fish.’ And I walked away.” She leaned her head back and blew three smoke rings. I watched in amazement as each ring drifted off and disappeared.
“So you see, mestisa?” she said. “Just because someone looks clean doesn’t mean they smell good.”
On the first day of the second week, I sat across from Sanchie on her bunk while she told me all the things an American girl should know.
In America, they move very fast, she said. Keep up.
In America, they don’t serve rice with every meal. Learn how to eat American pizza and hamburgers and hot dogs.
In America, money is very important. Act like you own a gold mine, but don’t act too much, because then they will think you are arrogant.
In America, walk with your head up so no one pushes you around.
Ignore Americans who call you names like ‘chink’ or ‘flip’ because they are nothing but gringos anyway.
Do not trust American boys.
Do not trust American girls.
Find your papa.
*
The workers on the Kioea allowed the passengers to eat in the small cafeteria on top deck, where two old Korean cooks offered meals like dried fish, pansit, eggrolls, eggplant and fried pork on stained plates that looked like they were stored on board the day the ship was built.
At 11:30 a.m. every day, I was expected to join my mother and Leila in the cafeteria to eat lunch. During the four crying days I refused to come up and afterwards I spoke as little as possible. In the barangay my mother rarely spoke to me, so I saw no reason to start now, especially since I still had not forgiven her for forcing me to move to America after I begged to stay with Lola in the Philippines.
At the daily lunches, my mother and sister passed the meal by talking about California and gossiping about other passengers. When my mother followed grace one morning by immediately addressing me, I knew it would have something to do with Sanchie.
“Magda, I don’t want you going on the deck with that woman anymore and I don’t want you visiting with her on her cot,” she said, pushing a pile of rice onto her spoon with a fork.
“Why? I like her.”
Leila snickered; my mother shushed her.
“She isn’t a good woman and I don’t want her filling your head with crazy thoughts.”
“What kind of thoughts?”
Mama sighed with a mouthful of rice. “I’ve heard her stories, Magdalena.”
“Her stories are funny,” I said. “She’s teaching me things that every American girl should know.”
“Like what?” Leila said. “How to make money on the streets of San Francisco?”
“An American girl only needs to know one thing, Magda – how to marry an American boy,” my mother said.
This is how it will always be, I thought. Me on one team and my mother and sister on the other. I was on a boat for America, starting an entirely new life, and all my teammates were on the other side of the ocean.
“Not true,” Sanchie said later that afternoon, as we ate sliced mango in the cafeteria. We were at the same table where I had eaten with Leila and mama a few hours before. “You might think you are a one-woman team now, but when you get to America, you will meet all kinds of people. Besides, you have one special thing that neither of them has. Something they will never have, no matter how hard they try.”
I swiped mango juice from my chin with the back of my hand and laid the peel on the plate between us. “What?”
“You’re half-American.”
“So?”
“Let me ask you something, mestisa. What is the best country in the world?”
“What do you mean?”
“In your opinion, what is the best country in the world?”
“The Philippines.”
Sanchie nodded. “Of course. Just like you think the Philippines is the best country in the world, Americans think America is the best country in the world. Japanese love Japan, Chinese love China, Mexicans love Mexico, and on and on. When you move into one of those countries, no matter what nationality you are, if you’re not like them, you will never quite fit. You have American blood, and that gives you a head start on Leila and your mother and any of the other Filipino passengers on this ship.”
“But I don’t know anything about America.”
“Not yet, but you will. It doesn’t take long to figure it out. All you need to do is make one American friend. A friend that you trust.”
“Mama says that American girls only need to learn how to marry American boys. They don’t need to know anything else.”
Sanchie dropped her mango on the plate in the middle of her bite.
“Magda,” she said. “I’m going to give you a lesson that Filipino parents never teach their children, but it’s something I have learned in life. Are you ready?”
I nodded.
“You have to have your own dreams,” Sanchie said. “A dream that you can reach on your own. Something that doesn’t rely on anyone else. Do you have a dream like that?”
I nodded.
“Okay. I want you to close your eyes and think of your dream.”
I closed my eyes and I thought: I want to be a nurse. The kind that takes care of the newborn babies. In my barangay, my Lola was a midwife and after the babies were born, it was my job to check on them. I would help the mothers feed the babies, put them to sleep, change and wash their diapers and calm them when they were sick. The mothers would become so frustrated when their babies started crying, so I would take the babies from their arms and hold them in mine. Usually they would sputter for a little while longer before they fell sleep. Lola said I had a gift.
I heard Sanchie’s sandpaper voice tell me to open my eyes and there she was, staring at me with a serious look on her face. I had never seen her look so serious.
“Did you think of it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. Now I want you to make two promises. The first promise is that you will never forget it. Do you promise?”
“Yes, manang.”
“The second promise is the most important.” She leaned forward. “Never tell anyone what your dream is. Not until you have that special someone who you know is on your team. Okay?”
“Why not?”
She picked up her discarded mango and continued eating it. “Once people find out what your dream is, they will try to destroy it. Sometimes they don’t mean to do it. Sometimes the people who love us try to destroy it because they think they know what’s best for us. Other times, there are people who are just jealous and spiteful and they don’t want anyone to accomplish their dreams because they could never accomplish theirs.” She shook her head as she sucked juice off her bottom lip. Her glossy lipstick had disappeared. “People are people. It’s impossible to figure them out sometimes.”
“Did you ever have a dream, Sanchie?”
“Of course.” She sat up in her chair, as if she was going to make a grand announcement. “I was going to be Sanchie Villaneuva, the greatest Filipina dancer in the world.”
I pictured Sanchie as a young woman twirling around on a grandstand with dozens of men with tuxedos gathered around her.
“What happened?” I asked.
“As soon as I learned the tango when I was eight years old, I told everyone my plans. Everyone knew that I wanted to be a dancer,” she said. “When my father found out, he told me how many dancers there were in the world and how hard I would have to dance to become better than them. My mother would ask me how I would find a partner to dance with if I didn’t have a boyfriend. My brothers told me I was too pigeon-toed, and my sisters said I had no balance. Over the years they chipped away at my dream until I forgot that I ever had it.”
Sanchie looked away, lost in her own thoughts. We could hear the Korean workers talking in the kitchen and the grinding of gears somewhere deep under our feet. I studied the lines of Sanchie’s face. Most of them were around her eyes and mouth and her cheeks were blemished with subtle age spots.
“Sanchie?” I said.
She looked back at me. “Yes, mestisa?”
“How old are you?”
She chuckled and waved a narrow finger at my nose. “That’s another lesson for you. Never ask someone how old they are. No one in the whole world knows the age of Sanchie Villaneuva.” She put her hand on her heart. “I will take it to the grave.”
The plate was now full of mango peels, so I carried it to the trash.
“I don’t have any secrets,” I said, swiping the peels into the garbage.
“Not yet. But wait until you’ve lived a little, and you’ll have plenty.”
With our table now clean, I sat back down.
“Actually, mestisa,” Sanchie said, “I know of at least one secret that you have.”
“What?”
“You’re talking to me.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bag and tapped it against the heel of her hand. “And I bet you were told that you couldn’t.”
I thought about the 11:30 lunch. Had Sanchie been in the cafeteria? How had she known?
“Don’t look so surprised,” she said. “It’s not the first time someone’s been warned to stay away from me.”
“Why don’t people like you, Sanchie?”
“Because I smoke cigarettes and I dance with men and I wear red lipstick.” She pulled a cigarette from the pack and lit it. “Worst of all, I say the truth. People don’t want to hear the truth most of the time.” She blew three smoke rings and muttered, “That’s why the world is the way it is.”
*
When the boat docked, it made no sound. After sixteen days on ship, I expected something spectacular, but instead I heard the rustling of my mother and sister and when I woke up, I saw the other Filipinos clearing out of the cabin with blankets tucked under the arms and bags over their shoulders.
“We’re in America. We’re here,” my mother said, and she repeated it over and over as she tossed our few belongings into each of the single bags we had brought with us.
I grabbed my Bible, climbed down from my cot and immediately looked for Sanchie. The short stack of novels and the pillowcases with bright yellow flowers were cleared from her bed.
Mama shoved my bag into my arms and told me to hurry up. The three of us followed the small pack to the short staircase leading to the dock. I expected to find Sanchie there, smoking in her usual corner, but the small crowd of passengers were packed into every inch of the deck, trying to squeeze through all the small doors that led to the plank.
My sister rambled on behind me, talking about everything she wanted to do to celebrate her first day in America – she wanted to see an American movie in the theatre, eat a hot dog on the street, see the golden bridge, look at American boys, go to the mall – but I only craned my neck forward, hoping to see Sanchie somewhere in the slow-moving pack of future Americans. According to the color of the sky, it was either early morning or early evening in America. The dock bustled with dozens of Filipinos holding up signs with the names of the passengers scrawled on them, Americans tying the ship’s rope to the pier, workers from the Kioea unloading small crates – there were so many things going on that it was impossible to focus on one thing, yet I did. I looked for Sanchie.
Behind my shoulder, my mother called my name and said I needed to look for a sign with our name on it.
“It’s there! There!” my sister called, pointing to a small family crammed in the crowd. The man of the family held a sign that said GILONGOS. “There’s our name!” She immediately pushed past me and ran up to the family, whom we had never met, and threw her arms around the man’s neck. My mother walked past me, too, and approached the family more cautiously, nodding her head and smiling before she realized I had lagged behind.
“Magda!” She motioned me over. “Halika!”
I walked slowly, still picking through all the people with my eyes, looking for Sanchie, and just as I resigned myself to never seeing her again, she was there. Under thin curls of cigarette smoke, I saw her leaning against a column with her bags at her feet. I used my elbows and shoulders to push through the thick crowd of Filipinos, Americans and Kioea workers between us. My mother kept yelling my name, louder and louder as I disappeared into the crowd, but I didn’t look back.
With Sanchie finally at arm’s length, I hugged her waist as hard as I could.
“I wanted to say goodbye,” I said. I hadn’t shed a tear since the four crying days, but I felt them again now, burning in my throat.
Sanchie kissed the top of my head. “Goodbye, mestisa.”
When I let her go and stood back to walk away, she stopped me, took the saint’s medal off her neck and slipped it over my head.
“For you,” she said. “There’s an inscription on the back.”
I turned the medal over and only saw a number: 61.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She leaned forward and whispered, “That’s how old I am.”
I heard my mother’s voice in the distance behind me and knew she had followed my path through the crowd.
“I want to be a nurse,” I told Sanchie. “The kind that takes care of babies. That’s my dream.”
Sanchie smiled. “You will be a wonderful American nurse. No doubt.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt the warmth of the tears on my cheeks. They came at the same time as my mother. Her hands squeezed my shoulders and pulled me away.
“I don’t want to take your medal,” I said to Sanchie, quickly. “It’s too special.”
“You can give it back to me the next time I see you.”
“When will that be?”
As I drifted back into the crowd and toward my new family, I saw Sanchie wink. “Who knows, mestisa?” she said. “Who knows?”
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A gentle story very well told. I didn’t spot any typos and your grammar offers no bumps and jolts to complain about. I really liked Sanchie’s observations of dreams and how people will chip away and erode them. I understand only too well and Sanchie made the point concisely.
For me, perhaps, the story was too tame. I was carried along because your writing style is seductive, like a whisper beckoning me on, but nothing really happened, so I’m wondering whether this is a stand alone short story or the beginning of a novel? Or, perhaps, is it a biographical piece?
Interesting, and if it is the beginning of a novel then I would like to read on, but if it is a stand alone short story, in my opinion it doesn’t really work as the reader is left in the air… wondering… which, potentially, is a point in itself, I suppose….
Very well done and I wish you well with this…
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