The first time I knew that writing was a way that you could connect with the world was when I was four. I was at home with my mother. It was an afternoon in Bremerton, Washington when I waited for the rest of my family to come home. My older sister and brother were at school. My father, a Navy sailor, was away at sea.
We sat criss-crossed in front of each other in the living room with only a piece of blank paper separating us. As the youngest of 3, it was always like this. I stayed near her closely observing what she was doing, whether it was when she cooked her world-famous strawberry cheesecake in the kitchen or when she was planting flowers in the garden outside. She held the pencil in her hand and began writing the letter “K” in cursive.
Then the letter R.
Then the letter I.
Then the letter S.
“That is your name,” she said. She repeated the motion once more, and to my fascination, I could not understand how something so simple and unassuming as a Wood-Cased Ticonderoga pencil that was barely sharpened could act as a mirror without so much of a physical reflection. She handed me the pencil. “It’s your turn.”
I wrote my name out. My lips moved with every hill and valley the tip drew out – something I still do to this day. What looked like scribbled hieroglyphics of a novice scribe was my name. It didn’t look pretty. But it was the way that I held the pencil for the first time. There was a control, as much as there was a pleasure, to know that I was creating something unlike anyone else. Even if I had written my name out, a messy etching onto a ripped out piece of composition notebook paper, I was surprised to know that this is who I was.
The reason I was practicing writing that day with my mother was because I was going to attend Jump Start to Kindergarten. I don’t remember when I became aware of this, but I was scared to leave my cave and out into the world. If I had written my name out enough, maybe I could have been prepared to introduce myself to the rest of my class. I didn’t know who was going to be there, but I at least knew who I was now. I was Krissy, the “Main Man,” the youngest of Santos siblings, and a kid who could now write.
I don’t remember when I started going to Jump Start. But before attending school, what I do remember was that I spent a lot of my days alone. When my mom spent the day cleaning the one-story house we had lived in, I watched a lot of television. For a long time, Barney was my favorite show. Because I barely spent time outside, as in Washington, it rained practically everyday. I’d sing out “Mister Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun,” in an attempt to fight the gray clouds that shed dark shadows in the living room. The sun sometimes never came out, but when it did, I put on my sunglasses and joined the rest of the children in dance. I soon stopped watching Barney one day when my older brother and sister rushed into the living room to break news to me. “Barney died!” they said. I spent the afternoon crying, and I stopped singing to the sun when it would rain.
*
When I was five years old, my father told me a story about his two left shoes. At a very young age, I knew that shoes were expensive. If I wanted a pair of Jordans, because my older sister and brother had a pair, then I had to make a case to him about why or what I needed them for. The Nike Air More Uptempo ‘96, the ones with the “NIKE” in all capitalized letters on the side, with a trim of blue set against a mostly white silhouette. The shoes in a time when Space Jam was the zeitgeist for every young Filipino kid. I had seen a kid in an offbeat commercial, wearing a backwards hat, wearing a pair. But for a kid that lived in the suburbs of Bremerton, I was in for a lesson that would set up a path of scarcity that I would chase until my 30s.
One day when I mustered up the courage to approach him about these Nikes that I wanted. On the rare occasion he was home from sea, he spent his Saturdays in solitude, prepping for the week ahead, whether it was for ironing his uniform, laying out his underwear, or shining his shoes. He sat on the carpeted floor with a makeshift cloth made of old Hanes t-shirts ripped in a fashion to cover his index finger. With his index finger, he smudged polish onto the toe box of his oxfords, shining the shoes by tiny circles in rapid succession until they shined. He sat on the carpeted floor of living room, and I sat across from him.
“Pops, I saw something on TV. And I want them.”
I told him, in the best of my ability, what the shoes would do for me. I could be cool like my older brother, and I could be a great basketball player.
Without lifting his eyes from the shine, he began his lecture.
“When I was your age, I had two left shoes.”
I don’t know whether it was a choice to withhold the information on what kinds of shoes they were. He was 37 at the time, stockily built, and relatively stronger in those days. Even though he was away at 6 months for stints on Naval carriers as an enlisted man, I remember him sitting across from me in his civilian clothes. So as he started his story, it was the first time I would be a student at his lecture. He was unrefined in the ways he talked to me, often choosing stronger language to hit the point home. It was his only way to relate to me, a preschooler that didn’t leave the house and stayed inside with Momma all day. “They were my tsinelas. I would shine shoes on the street to make ends meet. And still, I had two left shoes,” he repeated. I could still remember him in his polo, jean shorts, and ankle socks as he sat across from me. These days after he had his stroke, he sits in a wheelchair across from me – only a screen and the thousands of miles that separate us.
When I first started high school in Italy, and he was in Iraq, I did everything I could to seek validation from my peers. My older brother had left home, following my sister’s departure, and I was hanging out at basketball courts, trying my best to not mess up a pair of shoes I was wearing. “Where did you get those pairs?” my friends would ask. I had lit up whenever anyone asked me a question about anything regarding my choices. I’d tell them of the allowances I’d save up. The pennies I’d save in a tall jar of Bangus. “Man, your father must really love you.” But I didn’t tell them about the fact that my father wasn’t home. And as the afternoons ended, coming home after a day of showmanship, pretending to be the man, and finding the dinner table prepared for just two (my mother and I), I would think about the price I paid for having a nice pair of shoes. I would think about my father’s two left shoes.
I didn’t know much about my father’s home in the Philippines, other than the time he had brought me to his old neighborhood in Baguio City a year before. I was 4 years old, and it was a tradition to return back to Baguio between moves. My father’s assignments in the Navy meant we had to be willing to drop everything at the dime in order to follow orders, even if it meant leaving a really good situation behind. I remember being excited to go to the Philippines – to see my grandma and grandpa and to eat as much food as I could possibly imagine. These trips were respites from the hardships of living a shadow life that was promised to our immigrant Filipino family. So when we were in my father and mother’s land, our return called for celebration.
What I remember was that it was Christmas when we went, and my father scooped me up to take a taxi to his old neighborhood. “Wake up anak, we’re going to go on an adventure.” I could maybe speculate I gave him a fuss and he promised me something at the end of this ordeal, but I begrudgingly nodded my head to indicate my obedience. Out of all of my family members, I was the only one who had not seen where he had grew up. “Okay. Sigi.” Before we left my grandma and grandpa’s house, my father picked up a olive drab duffle bag. He tossed it into the back of the cab, and we were on our way to an unknown part of Baguio.
As he pointed out the streets and named memories, such as the time he had fallen and hurt his head and survived a near death experience, I watched through the window at the decrepit street corners and dilapidated houses. My father had escaped this place, but was choosing to come back. I spotted what I had believed to be a cat and dog combination, both sides of the animal adorning the face of a mutt and a feline. I imagined I was somewhere else. I, for the first time in my life, had the feeling of confusion. When the taxi stopped, he tossed me on his back and carried the duffle in his right hand. I clutched my arms around his neck, hoping not to fall. We approached the house, and I saw strange looking men at the front. They held brown bottles and lifted them to the sky. “Hoy,” they said. I buried my face into his neck. As they opened the door for him, an eruption of applause welcomed us as my father stepped through the door.
In his family’s home, his stepmother and many siblings surrounded all of us. My father, beaming from a smile, began speaking in Ilocano. I didn’t understand much of what he was saying, but I knew I did not feel safe. As his relatives all stood around the house to form a circle in front of him, he sat in a chair. I was on his knees. He picked me up and patted me on the head, setting me down onto my feet. The ground beneath felt that it could crumble. As my father kneeled, he opened up the duffle bag. The room was silent. Like a magician, he pulled out the bunny to reveal his magic tricks. The first item he uncovered was a toothbrush. Then a towel. Then shirts. Then snacks. Sunglasses. Pants. Even shoes. As his side of the family cheered, I began to wonder where he had the time and money to prepare all of these things. Was he doing something when he was away to sea? Was he secretly in the Philippines, living a double life with his family? They all laughed and joined in a chorus of howling.
It was the first time I had felt disappointment. I didn’t know who these people were. Where they had come from. I only knew that they were my father’s family. They were all receiving gifts without having to plead. There were no mentions of how we had to only eat dinner at home. No mentions of how little gas was in the tank. No mentions of two left shoes. did know there were no lectures of two left shoes. They did not have to ask, but they still received.
I began crying, but I was only drowned out by the shattering laughter of his relatives. One of them spoke in English, “Why is he crying?” They pointed at me. I ran to my father’s arms, and hid my eyes away. Why was I crying? I wasn’t enough to even be here. I didn’t even deserve these things they were being given. As my father rubbed my head, I drifted in and out of sleep, dreaming of a Christmas where we could be away from these people.
*
“Why do you want these shoes, anak?” my father asked me. It became a starting point of my life, a question that manifests in my mind in mutated forms. There’s a voice, my father’s voice, that asks me why I do anything. I once stood in the middle of 5th Avenue contemplating if I should eat food or not before I had to meet with my therapist. There I was, freezing during the winter, unable to go into a convenience store to buy myself something as simple of a sandwich. “Why do I need to eat right now,” I ask myself. Why do I need to survive?
Eventually, my father bought me the shoes. The one condition of buying these shoes was that he would also buy a pair of them for my older brother. We were both delighted that our father was buying us something, a pair of shoes that we could wear to school and show off to our peers. But it didn’t stop him from reminding us of that story. He repeated himself on the car ride home. “When I was your age, I only had 2 left shoes.” He began his story once more, even adding a few more details that were different from before. As I sat in the back, I stared at the shoes on my lap. The Nike box was open. It was everything that I had wanted. But I felt empty. I wondered if I deserved to wear these, thinking about an entire country of kids like my father walking around clumsily in two left shoes, trying to make it through their day. We were headed home, but itw as then where I began to believe that I didn’t deserve any luxuries in my life. Looking out at the window, the rain had began to fall. I closed my eyes and drifted away. I saw black. In the dark, there are eyes and teeth and the howl of sharp laughter.
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