Everything We Never Had: List 3

They will bask in scents and sounds that remind them of home.

He shrugs with practiced indifference and focuses on whatever task is at hand.

Emil nods as he screws the lid back onto a shaker, clenching his jaws as he braces for his auntie’s familiar—but fair—criticisms of Francisco.

In saunters Auntie Gia, whose husband owns the dry cleaner a few doors down.

“English,” Auntie Carmen gently admonishes as she nods toward Emil.

He understands Ilokano but stopped speaking it years ago at her behest.

Yet as much as he pretends otherwise, there’s a part of him that remains excited at the possibility of seeing his father after nearly a month. Not as big a part as when he was little but a part nonetheless. A sliver.

But Auntie Gia clears her throat and nods toward Emil, not as subtly as she might think.

The next thing he hears is Auntie Carmen tutting for a long time to convey deep, deep disapproval.

Their conversation turns to the ongoing highway construction and how the destruction of the West End will be worth it when it revitalizes the downtown like the redevelopment agency says it will.

Or, when they don’t, the growers hire thugs to swing bats and fists and crowbars to ensure the strike or boycott does not last.

He grabs a crate of misshapen tomatoes picked by hands as brown as his and tips it over, sending them splashing into the cold water.

“But most importantly, you’re very, very diligent. I see how closely you listen when I lecture, and your notes, your work—so neat and meticulous! Even your handwriting is impressively consistent!”

“Really?” he asks, taken aback.

His books fly out of his hands, and he crashes onto the floor as laughter ripples through the hallway, extinguishing the glow of pride he had been feeling only a moment before.

He will laugh later when they all end up with mediocre jobs, stuck forever in this godforsaken town.

“I’m fine, thanks,” he answers pointedly in English to preempt the inevitable taunting from their white classmates or the likely admonishments from their white teachers.

As Emil climbs the stairs to their apartment after his shift, he smells the smoke and hears the muffled din of voices that are the telltale signs of a meeting.

Eyes turn and conversations fall quiet as Francisco surveys the room.

When it subsides, Francisco addresses the crowd again, this time in the somber, resonant voice he uses for speeches.

Too bad it’s horseshit, Emil thinks, squirming under his father’s clammy grip as he drops his eyes to the floor.

Disciplined men who save and go straight home after returning from the fields.

“This was the mindset of our ancestors that we must relearn,” Francisco continues, unaware of his son shifting uneasily under his hand.

“Because if we are only caring about ourselves, then we do not have power. If the Mexicans cut the grapes, the Filipinos pack the grapes, and the Blacks deliver the grapes, then we never talk, never see that our plight is the same. Because one voice alone is loud enough to thank the growers for scraps but not loud enough to demand a fair wage. One set of hands is strong enough to tend their crops but not our future. One pair of fists is powerful enough to fight for today but not for tomorrow.”

Instead Francisco goes on, recounting the indignities and exploitations, the history and the victories of the Filipino labor struggles in the plantations and canneries and fields.