FILIPINO AMERICAN BARBIE

(for Denise Duhamel) by Maria Luisa A. Igloria

* from the book Blood Sacrifice (U.P. Press,
1998)
My heart goes out to her, especially when
Dear sister in the islands, it’s the middle of March she comes in from a fight with her boyfriend.
but there’s a snowstorm watch in Chicago. I need Despite her share of forthrightness, she’s still
to get away, to lie in the tropical sun, sign up caught in a bind. She wants him to listen
for one of those tours that primse you a blinding to what she’s not saying aloud, she wants
“recovery of cultural roots”. Here, I can never him to train every cell in his body to the
go anywhere and when we do it’s always to messages
church, she unconsciously sends with her eyes, the
to the mall or to parties, and there’s always unspoken
chaperones language of her need. She flings herself upon me
and a curfew. I’m tired of winter’s chocolate-and- on the bed. It crosses my mind that following
angel- the American way, this is a time she needs
white fashions, tired of being mistaken for to work out her griefs in private,
Pocahontas even as her warm salt tears fall on my
without the fringe. My owner’s parents bought perfected face, and my brown arms ache
me to form the gesture for embrace.
because they thought I would help her identify
more closely with a model. They looked and
looked
inside my box and seemed disappointed
when they couldn’t find a manual or free cassette
on Tagalog Made Easy, but quickly appreciated
the fact that among my accessories– including
a Gold Card, magenta fan and singkil princess’
costume, a beauty queen’s sash and rhinestone
tiara– was a birth certificate proclaiming me
third generation, American born, all parts
assembled in the USA. “See,” they said,
“she isn’t one of those who’d chase after Ken
or some other chap in a G.I. uniform
because she needs a green card. Look at that
and count your blessings”. My owner
doesn’t always think kindly of me– all of this
is never spoken, though I can read it easily.
After all, I’m supposed to have a Filipino core–
perhaps something encased in my plastic rubber
ribcage? Anyway, when she’s in a bad mood she
pulls
at my face and hisses at me to point with my
lips.
She tells her parents I smell like fish, no matter
how many times she washes my dark, waist-
length
hair in lemon-scented dishwashing detergent.
I can understand her frustrations. Like her,
my English is without accent, but sometimes
I think both of us could use a short
aggressiveness
training course. It must be the rule of obedience–
you never raise your voice to someone older,
someone male; you never question authority.
Her parents and grandparents won’t let her, but
she wants to join the navy and see the world.
She wants to put on a ‘chute and fall nearly
weightless through a brilliant sky, to skim
down the sights of a rifle and hit a target
from a hundred yards away. She wants
to dye her hair purple or wear it in dread-
locks. She wonders what it’s like to kiss
a woman, what it’s like to have a white
boy come inside her. She wants to invent
herself and escape the sticky coils of chismis. [-
gossip]