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The airport looked like a megalithic bathroom, with the janitorial-fresh aroma, pale yellow tiled walls, and green steeped corridors. We headed into the front lobbies near the baggage checkpoints and ticket counters where my mom scoured the proximity for her brother, Uncle Bhoy. I walked around nonchalantly nearby, leaving the search up to mom, or until Uncle Bhoy could spot us. Ten years passed since our last visit to the Philippines; I just turned six then, and I vaguely remembered or recognized anything here; all the places, people – even the faces of my relatives were difficult memories to rekindle.

I turned to find my mom talking to my husky uncle Bhoy. He had dark skin like his brothers, in contrast to his pale sisters. He had a cheesy grin that hinted his jocular and frolicking spirit. His stomach bulged slightly over his belt, and if I were to slap it, it would feel tough and rebound. I knew he was healthy and kickin’.

As we stepped outside to wait for our ride, a blast of tropical heat hit us, and we could see the platoons of jeepneys and trikes parading the roads even on a hot summer night. The sparks of déjà vu and nostalgia spun again as I smelt the odor of car exhaust. A red mini-van came for us, and as we stepped inside, a rush of A/C goodness swept our skin. I quickly pointed out my Auntie Maricon sitting inside, obviously thinner than what she looked in photos years ago. A young girl sat in the back, who I’ve guessed to be my cousin Michelle, all grown up, thirteen years old, just like my sister. I couldn’t identify the driver, though, another dark-skinned fellow who wore a formal button shirt and bore the most ordinary of hairdos conceivable. Still couldn’t recognize him even after reeling through my memories, even referencing photos from home didn’t help. His facial features resembled none of my mom’s or uncle’s or auntie’s and he surely didn’t say much, either.

Auntie Maricon told him to head over someplace else, maybe a restaurant, at least that’s what I picked up from the dialogue; my Tagalog is whimsical at best, and I possess a weak vocabulary and a draft-up of conventional pocket slang and crude cuss phrases. When my mom confirmed that auntie wanted to grab us something quick to eat before heading home, I threw my hands up in supplication. Finally, I thought, real food! I got tired toiling the long flights eating meager servings of fish, snacking on dry peanuts, salty crackers – and then peanuts again. Auntie ordered us some sub sandwiches and a few drinks. Good enough, I told myself, and it beats the airline’s pseudo-food.

After the yum-yums, we ascended into the freeway towards Muntinlupa City. The nightly sights of resplendent glass malls and billboards and luminous light shows of the Philippine metropolis never escape me. Neither does the rhapsody of retreating overseas, to take up adventurism and leave the orthodoxy of school, society, and obligation in blissful abandon. Even though I scoped out a few untidy roads, tawdry buildings and haphazard heaps of garbage, my sojourn instilled peace.

We descended off-ramp somewhere, and the metropolis faded behind us as we drove past small repair stands, grocery shops, and market boutiques. The streets still lit up, full of people and peddlers walking around. We arrived in front of a gate, beside what looked liked an office building, towering only a few stories. A large circular emblem decked the top, but I couldn’t read the words emblazoned around it. Outside, the gate slid open, and a security officer in white uniform and black slacks walked out. He confirmed and gestured our driver to continue past the gate down a narrow alley. I didn’t recall seeing security guards here before. Or maybe I just forgot about them. The alley led into a huge dark gym and onto a second gate, where another security guard opened for us and let us through. I could tell it was a gym because both ends had roof-bound basketball hoops. I thought the chockablocked buildings had crunched in my relative’s house, robbing them of space and forcing them to weave through tight spaces. We even had to cut through a gym.

At last, we parked in the driveway in front of the house. It looked like a stunted miniature chateau. A separate roof and several large palm trees hung over the driveway, as well as a halogen lamp that lit up most of the yard. The concrete walls and Victorian metal fences surrounded and enclosed the house and yard, cloistering it from the rest of the world. A security guard in blue sat in a plastic picnic chair with a radio beside him. That’s number three, I thought, and I imagined another contingent lined up along the walls. Auntie is obviously paying these guys — or whatever firm they’re from – just to be here; and then that thing with driving inside a gym. Then I remembered the balikbayan boxes we sent. On the address field, my mom would always write: Tepaurel Compound.

Uncle Mysterious opened the sliding doors and then the wooden double doors to the house, helping alongside the security guard to unload baggage from the van. I went inside the house with everyone else. A living room combined with the dining room and hall, so the whole house resembled a ballroom with a ceiling topped at the second floor. I called this the den, but it really should be called a super den since it was so huge to actually ride a bike and run laps around. The dining area of the hall connected with a large kitchen and doorway to the sides of the house. A couple oriental sofas sat in different areas of the den. Two flights of stairs led to the second floor hallway with bedrooms for my uncle’s and auntie’s families, and not to forget my lola, or my grandma, who also lived here. The windows in the house, except for the air-conditioned rooms, were barred and had no glass, so sometimes it would be unbearable to lounge around in the den during the daytime.

We sat down together at a long dining table for a reunion, catching up with everyone, wondering how everyone’s lives had been since parting almost a decade ago. Most of my cousins who used to be toddlers or elementary school kids were now either middle or high school students. When my mom mentioned my name, Auntie Maricon bum-rushed me with the questions: How old are you? What do you want to do when you go to college? And the classic, most anticipated one: Got a girlfriend?

They prepared a bedroom for us upstairs: a well-ventilated air conditioned room with softly painted sky-blue walls and slicked wooden floors, equipped with a T.V. and bathroom with a showerhead. Can’t forget the showerhead. I didn’t want to mess with boiling a bucket of water and using a tabo to take my baths. Not this time. There were two beds placed adjacent to the wall with one for each to sleep on, but those left were driven to sleep on a floor mattress. Not too damning, but at night a few curious cockroaches did sweep across the floor sometimes. Some of my cousins and uncles still hung around downstairs picking through the balikbayan cargo we brought, packed with Vienna sausages and Spam and clothes and magazines and American electronics – but they really should be indulging in the imports from their neo-digital neighbors in Japan.

The night looked young, but I was tired and exhausted. Frontiers await to be explored, and my heart ached for the caprice of adventure. I jumped on one of the beds, and it didn’t take long before my senses drifted, and fell sound asleep.

I woke up around 10:30 AM like I usually do back in the States. I expected to be still jet-lagged from our arrival and therefore irritable and churlish. But the jet lag actually helped sync my body to the Philippines’ time zone. No one else lay around the room, so I stepped out into the den to check on everyone. Outside, obviously a beautiful sunny day, a perfect time for a wanderluster, and not to mention, it must be hot and humid and sticky and a perfect day for mosquitoes and flies to latch on to anything fleshy that moved. What’s more, they alerted all nearby residents of stray malaria-carrying mosquitoes in our area. Whenever bite marks appeared on my skin, I could only hope that the Universe was on my side.

Walking downstairs, I picked up on a fried sweet and sugary aroma. That told me something: Spam. It had to be Spam. Senses were already in a seethe and berserked for an ultimate breakfast. My mom and Auntie Maricon were sitting down at the dining table talking, already done eating, and they beckoned me over.

Elsie, their maid, cooked a feast every morning. On the table, platters of sunny-side up eggs, sausages, hotdogs, sweet pork, fried rice, fried tilapia, and Spam, with a luau of fresh fruit on the side. And not to mention, the canisters of Nido and Milo, with maybe a bomb shelter surplus somewhere in the back of the kitchen. Uncle Mysterious walked through the front door carrying a Jollibee box. Jollibee is a fast food franchise in the Philippines. I don’t think he likes Elsie’s cooking, I thought. Then my mom said it wasn’t his, but for Michael, Michelle’s brother. Michael eschews homemade breakfast, and no true breakfast exists unless it’s a jolly good, bloody hell of a breakfast from Jollibee. It’s hard to negotiate with him sometimes, my Auntie Maricon said. Not that he’s spoiled, but that he had Down Syndrome. And Uncle Mysterious isn’t even a relative– he’s simply their driver, Elmer. There I was thinking he was my uncle and about to give the guy brotherly intimate man hugs, and he’s only someone they hired for a job.

After breakfast, I changed clothes, and then I waited outside for Uncle Bhoy who wanted to take me touring the school next door where two of my cousins attended, Richard and Raymund. We entered past the gym where a bunch of school boys in uniform were playing basketball. The gym belonged to the Muntinlupa Cosmopolitan School, Uncle Bhoy said, a private school. The school opened in ’97, and the higher we ascended the floors, the more incomplete it looked, since they were still adding and subtracting materials from places, building more rooms, painting, renovating. As we walked further into the school, he pointed out the shop near the front entrance where snacks and goodies and supplies were sold. I saw Raymund in there sitting with some of his female friends, but decided to leave him be for the meantime. Uncle Bhoy said Auntie Maricon had an office here opposite of the shop. “She works here?” I asked, “Well, what does she do?”

“She’s the president of the school.” He replied.

His answer floored me. Then he continued, saying he was a civil engineer, responsible for the school’s blueprints and construction, meaning he built the place. Again, floored. Then he explained how Auntie Maricon and her husband leased, I think, warehouses near the compound to overseas companies who desired to do business in the country, hence all the security guards patrolling 24/7. Floored again. Then Raymund sprang up and ran over to me: “You know, my friend thinks you’re cute. I think she has a crush on you. Want to go talk to her?” Already being lulled into a busty high school girl’s romantic fantasy on my first day there? Floored, yet again.

“Raymund, not now, I’m busy!”

“Later, then?”

“Yeah, later,” meaning sometime in the eternity of never. I knew he would badger me later on, so I thought up different venues of escape: Jump over building? Dive roll out the window? Or, just hope he doesn’t see me and run like hell out the exit? I returned back home safely with Uncle Bhoy, but Raymund eventually besieged me at night about his female friend and her apparent lickerish temptation to get to know me. He interrogated me then relayed the answers back to her the next day. Sweet Jesus.

Myles is a Halfway Contributing Writer

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