The Birthday

 

I could smell the lumpia and pansit before I even got out of the car. I closed the door and went up to the gate where the intercom was. I dialed in the number corresponding to my aunt and uncle’s name on the board next to it and asked them to open the door.

 

“Be right there,” my aunt said and quickly yelled at one of my cousins in Tagalog. I never was able to speak Tagalog fluently, but growing up with Filipino parents, I was able to understand it, knowing that my aunt had yelled for one of my cousins to open the gate. My younger cousin ran out of the house with her flimsy plastic slippers slapping against the concrete and arriving breathlessly at the gate to open it and let me in.

 

“Hurry up, the party’s gonna start!” she said, running back down the path to the condominium where my aunt and uncle lived. I shifted my purse strap on my shoulder and walked to the house, hearing the commotion of rapid Tagalog and English. I was immediately greeted with hugs and kisses, smelling the food in their skin and being pushed towards the short table loaded with plates of food that even my mom wouldn’t recognize.

 

“What’s that brown stuff Mom’s eating?” I heard my little cousin Kara ask her older sister. Her older sister took a quick glance before her face turned an unsightly shade of green.

 

“I think that’s chocolate meat,” she said, making a face. I couldn’t help but sympathize. I remember being a toddler and having one of my numberless aunts shoving a spoonful of rice covered with it, and immediately spitting it back out before I could even chew it. I picked up a piece of meat and took a bite, relieved to see that it was just beef, and I grabbed a few slices. Rolling one up and taking a bite, I went outside to see another table filled with dishes and food my dad wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, and as full as the back yard was with people, I don’t think that all of my relatives could possibly be there.

 

Most of my older relatives were dressed up to be at a birthday party, but most of the kids and high school and college aged ones of us were dressed up as if we were just going to hang out at the mall. I wasn’t even told that there was going to be a party that day until my mother called me up at my dorm and told me to get ready to go to my aunt’s.

 

“Why, what’s going on?” I asked.

 

“Your aunt is throwing a party for your cousin Sandra,” my mom said. “Shh, don’t tell her, it’s a surprise party.” Every party was a surprise to me, seeing how I grew up never knowing what the parties were for until I got there. I never knew upon arrival what the party was for unless there was a cake from that one bakery, Goldilocks, sitting on the table, as my very younger cousins would go up to the cake to try and get a frosting covered finger. I was told that her sister Felisa was going to take her out for the day for a few hours, and then drive her to our aunt’s where she would be surprised.

 

Felisa and Sandra’s mom, my mother’s sister, was the first one to marry outside of the Filipino group. She had met a nice white guy at work, and for as long as I could remember, might as well have always been part of the family. This guy was a trip for my family—or so I heard growing up. He was the only white person they knew who actually took the time to learn the Filipino language; the only one to ask about more than just a word or phrase here and there. Even as a child, he spoke to me in fluent Tagalog and I stared up at him in curiosity, wondering how he knew the language I could barely respond back to in.

 

I sat down next to my brother David and continued to eat my beef. I heard what sounded like a crude joke from my brother, and I gave him a disapproving look, but said nothing and continued to eat. More of my other cousins were gathered around him, talking and giggling over something.

 

“…Wouldn’t it be funny if Sandra came in here and freaked out if she got rice on her suit again?” the youngest in the group asked, holding her stomach from her fits of giggling.

 

“I know,” her sister said, becoming fully animated, “one grain of rice on her nice business suit ‘Ahhhh! Get it off, this is dry clean only!’”

 

“Or if she asks if that’s real fish on the grill again,” their brother interjected, bending down and slapping his knee. I recognized the smirk on David’s face, waiting for his punch line.

 

“She’s not Filipino enough,” he said simply. “She’s whiter than Michael Jackson, what do you expect? She doesn’t even look Filipino, and she never acts like it either. Just a white girl hanging around, that cracker.” I rolled my eyes at my brother before taking another bite of the beef. It was cold, but it tasted so good.

 

One of our numberless little cousins began yelling that Felisa’s silver Toyota had been parked in the driveway and yelled for everyone to be quiet. We heard some shuffling in the house and saw Felisa open the sliding door.

 

“Surprise!!!” everyone yelled before going into a rendition of “Happy Birthday”. We sang it loud, our Filipino accents filling the words with our warmth before launching into a second round of “Happy Birthday”, this time much faster accompanied by the clapping of our hands.

 

At the end of all the happy clapping and cheering, Felisa stood at the door, her arms crossed.

 

“Sandra had to work,” Felisa said simply. “She didn’t want to hang out with me today and she got called in.” The kids whispered stressed “ooohs” and a few of my older relatives conversed in rapid Tagalog, wondering how Sandra could choose a day of work over her family.

 

“We worked very hard on this party for her,” Sandra’s mother scolded Felisa sharply. “Now you tell her to come over and to stop pouting. We’re going to have a very long talk with her later tonight.” Felisa responded back in broken Tagalog that she had tried to persuade Sandra to take the day off but she was unusually unresponsive and refused to go over.

 

“Well someone go get her,” her mother snapped back. “That was extremely rude of her to that!” Felisa almost looked like she was on the verge of tears as her mother continued to speak her in sharp, motherly tone and I meekly volunteered to go to her work and try to get her to come over.

 

“You tell her to come over and that I said so,” my aunt said to me. “Everyone is waiting for her.”

 

                                     *            *            *            *

 

The buzzing of the bright white fluorescent lights over my head greeted me as I walked into the office. I worked through the maze of gray cubicles trying to find the one with her last name posted at the door. Women had their blond hair pulled up in high buns and I could hear the dull thunk of their high heels hitting the boring carpet. Low-pitched telephone rings ended with memorized greetings of the company name and questions with false hospitality and were eventually followed by “one moment please” and some dialing before hanging up. I could hear scratching of pencils and pens and the rustling of so many important documents. Computer keyboards clacked at the high speed and precision of eighty-words-per-minute. I finally found the cubicle marked Sandra Michaels.

 

Sandra’s computer was turned off and she was leaning on her desk with her left hand supporting her forehead. She was scribbling mindlessly on some blank piece of paper, and the bun that was supposed to look like everyone else’s was already sliding down her head and loose hairs began to frizz back to their normal state. I could see the cord of her earphone leading to her left ear as she continued to sit there. I cleared my throat once or twice before she finally turned around to face me.

 

“I thought Felisa was going to come back,” Sandra said in a bored tone before turning back to her paper. I pulled up the chair from her cubicle mate’s desk and sat next to her. She didn’t say anything to me for a while and kept her back turned to me.

 

“Shouldn’t you be working right now?” I asked. She huffed quietly.

 

“I would if I were on the clock,” she said. She continued to scribble quietly at her desk, not making any attempts to acknowledge my presence.

 

“You know everyone’s back at the house waiting for you,” I started in on a sharper tone. “They’re all there waiting to have your party with you, and your mom’s pissed off that you blew off the entire family today.” Sandra remained silent for a few more minutes, becoming more meticulous about what she was scribbling.

 

“Maybe they should have thought about that before they blew me off first,” she said quietly. I gaped.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded. “The family blew you off first? That’s got to be the most selfish thing I’ve heard from you yet! All you care about is your work, you never want to spend time with your own family anymore—”

 

“Well I’m sorry,” Sandra said. “I’m sorry if I didn’t know you all wanted to hang out with such a cracker like me.” My eyes widened, hearing my own brother’s words echoed back to me.

 

“Hey, that’s not true,” I snapped back, pushing down any time I had ever teased her, however privately, over her lack of Filipino traits.

 

“No, no, I understand,” Sandra said, finally facing me, her mother’s eyes glaring back at me. “I understand why you wouldn’t want to hang out with me. I guess it’s a problem if you’re allergic to fish, if you didn’t grow up in the Philippines, can only get the right dark skin tone in a tanning booth, get yelled at in school for speaking Tagolog instead of English and if both of your parents are so hard assed about getting a job and making money that you don’t even have enough time to hang out with your friends let alone family. Well for that, I am SO sorry if that’s a problem for this family. I am SO sorry that I was born into this family without any regard for what they expect out of me. How selfish of me. Just plain selfish.”

 

“Hey Sandy, your hair’s falling down,” another one of her numberless blond coworkers commented as she passed by. “We need to do your hair so it’ll stop frizzing like it does. Did you think about doing the blond highlights? That’s gonna look SO good on you!” Sandra scowled and rolled her eyes and waited for her coworker to get the hint and leave.

 

“I already told her several times that I’m not interested in that,” Sandra snapped, turning back to her paper. “I don’t feel like looking like the same old drones that work here.”

 

“Sandy, could you turn in these forms for me?” another coworker of hers said dropping a fat file bulging with papers onto her desk. “I need someone to cover for me so I can leave early. I got that hot date with that waiter from the other night, remember?”

 

“Yeah,” she grumbled. “Nicest guy I ever met before in my life, too.”

 

“Oh you’ll find the guy that’s meant for you,” she said winking. “I gotta go, love ya, you’re the best!” Her coworker sped off to the elevators giggling. Sandra glowered and picked up the big file.

 

"I need to take this file down to my supervisor," she said flatly. "Tell Mom I'll be home by nine." Sandra walked down the aisle of cubicles, leaving the last song on her iPod to fade out quietly and her dulled out pencil rolling off of her desk. I stood up and looked at the paper on her desk. I hadn't remembered that Sandra was the most talented artist out of all my cousins, and I loved how her drawing of the family embraced her exacly the way she was drawn

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[DarkAngelWriter]

Aw, Nan, I'm sorry I didn't read this sooner. I'm starting to really form a grudge against that brother of yours... but with the way you talk about him, I'm sure you already have one! Lol. ^_^

And I know this review won't help, but f**k you anyway, I saw somewhere up there where you left out a word (I'll note it) but other than that, looked good ^_^

[Raef C. Boylan]

This is a great story; you absorbed me into it straigth away, with your descriptions and realistic dialogue. Without overdramatising, you've depicted the problems of multicultural families - in fact, any family; white folks would likely be as pissed off with their daughter for not showing up to this party.
I could relate clearly to the atmosphere of the party and the contrasting office environment - you've done a great job translating your vision to the reader.
In case you can't tell, I enjoyed this a lot.
Thanks for sharing it with us.

[Sound]

This was an amazing story, I must say. I was intrigued at how closely the predicament propposed in your story so closely describes that of Mexican-Americans. Hell, I'd bet every race in the world has the same predicament. It's so sad when one cannot even find solace within one's own race, but it's a truth not often shared. I love your boldness. Thanks for submitting. 100%

[sutoraika]

Well-told story about the struggle of Filipino-Americans. hehe, similar to the struggle of a Filipino-Canadian. I liked the ending...bittersweet.

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i liked the story kept it had a topic that kept me interested and you told it well

[Nely Amorim]

lovely write.. you are very eloquent in your story telling. :)

[Albert Freeman]

Another good story from you. It's amazing how we don't see at times how teasing of a cousin or family member can affect them from childhood all the way into adulthood. Makes you pause and do some hard thinking and looking. Keep up the writing.