A Name Too Big For Me

Nothing brings my family together quite as good as a funeral.

They’re like ants to spilled sugar. This time, the sugar being my grandmother's will. The last bit of her belongings spanning from her time here in the Philippines, Holland, Hawaii, and finally where she spent most of her time, with us in America. However, she wanted to die in the house her husband built for her, so she spent the last bit of time she had left in this world reminiscing about a man who was no longer there. Something that runs in our family, apparently.

Our father, my sister Amy warned me, will be the fiercest of the agitators there. Unlike me, she’s met him, she's grown up with him. It wasn’t until I came along did he decid that being a father no longer suited him. Or well we thought. “He needs money, and he’s not ashamed of where he’ll find it,” my sister told me. I worry this may be a hidden characteristic I have unknowingly inherited from him. I inherited his first name, and I worry about what else he may have passed down to me.

Arthur stepped into fatherhood again when he had impregnated who my mom calls the “mistress.” Then he had both of his feet deep in fatherhood when he had a second. Another older daughter and younger son combo that resembled me and my sister. I began to wonder that maybe fatherhood did suit him, it was just me and my sister that no longer did.

I do enjoy how my mom only mentions his new wife as the “mistress.” It’s a hilarious bit I’ve created in my mind because of how vague my mother can be. I don’t blame her, I doubt she wants to remember any details about the woman my dad left her for. She tells me what I need to know, that she’s younger, a homewrecker, and a loser. All of the words that rhyme seemed to make sense when profiling a woman she's never met. Not being satisfied with that, I filled in the blanks. The mistress, for some reason, is always wearing a long and flowing red dress, the tail of it being carried by the wind. Her laugh imitates a cadence similar to skipping a rock successfully on water. In other contexts, she sounds awesome.

I had to stop myself because I realized I was doing exactly what my mother was, painting an imaginary portrait to fuel my feelings. Unlike my mother, I don’t have the same reasons to justify my hate of her. I rode in with her pain and anger, and I had to habitually remember to empty these things out of my pockets. 

It's been 12 years since I’ve been back to the motherland, and I no longer feel like a child to it, for many reasons. My mother tongue became lost to me when it was decided that learning English and being fluent in it was more important than keeping that connection to my culture alive. Secondly, and I think my Arthur might take this as a personal attack, which it may or may not be, I had dropped his first name. Well, not entirely. I’m a junior, carrying the same name for the first 25 years of my life. It then came upon me when my beautiful trans friend told me changing names isn’t just for trans people, you can do it just because you hate your name. It’s hilarious, I didn’t realize I could do this until I was about 25 years old. I’m nearly 30 now, and the new name feels much better.

So I cut off half of his name, two syllables was too much credit for this man, and inserted my mother's, Chi. Something my mother was thrilled about, and my biological father, probably pissed at. I don’t care, he hasn’t spoken a word to me in all of my years alive. Not a single Happy Birthday or, “You still alive?”

The hot air surprises me when leaving the airport. It licks your face, drips into your shirt, and sets you ablaze. Every orifice of your body produces sweat, and soon, you’ll be contributing to the shared humidity. 

“Oh, I don’t miss this,” my sister says, tugging her luggage over.

I laugh and shoot back with, “what else do you think we’ve actually missed from here ?” It’s a crude question, but honest. I don’t remember much.

“Grandma,” she says, shutting me up. 

Amy takes us to the main form of transportation here, the jeepneys. They’re large communal shuttles with an open back entrance and windows, which is a great relief for the hot air. However, a new anxiety has taken its place. 

“So like, just no seatbelts ?” I ask my sister, being the only one to cling to the bar above our heads. Everyone else is on their phones or occupying their hands in other ways, handing money to the driver back and forth. I’m surprised the driver can multitask this hard, counting, giving change, and making sure we don’t all die. The rank of priorities are also in that order.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. And stop holding onto that, you’re making us look like tourists.”

But we are tourists.

Or, well, at least I am. My sister grew up here and actually learned Tagalog. Meanwhile, I became a travel buddy for my mom during her time of grief. She retraced my grandmother's footsteps, taking us to Hawaii, Holland, and America. By the time we returned here, she decided that we all needed to live in the States. I wonder if she found what she was looking for during all that time traveling. I wonder if I’ll have to do the same thing in the future. I hope to never have my heart broken the way my mother did. 

Me and my sister are the last of our family to arrive, meaning the viewing is already on its third day or so. Flowers of all kinds, different bouquets adorn the gate of our home, and more flowers are undoubtedly inside surrounding Nanay’s casket. 

This at least, I was familiar with. I went to a lot of funerals when I was a kid, an odd thing to say. It used to scare me, how in our culture, the body of the deceased lives in the home for about a week for neighbors and friends to view before we bury them. Honestly, I don’t know what my preferred form of after-death care would be. I’m partial to cremation but I think that’s because it’s the cheapest option. 

Inside, my sister and I search the crowd for our mother, who came early to plan the entire thing. Uncles and aunts helped, for sure, but my mom has always felt like everything was her responsibility and acted on it. 

We spot her in the backyard with what seems like a line of people she has to hug and assure our grandmother is in a better place. She must get tired of this role, but she fits it so well. 

We greet her, just to let her know we’re here, and let her continue to play this role.

She greets us with the usual, “Did both of you eat yet? Go eat now, we’ll run out of food soon.” During these parties, we never run out of food. My sister, quick to leave, finds a group of friends she went to high school with. I turn to do the same, just without the group of friends to return to.

“Chi, by the way,” she pauses, adding more weight to her words, “your father is here.”

I laugh knowing how easy it’d be to avoid him. Other than a handful of baby pictures, he doesn’t know how I grew up or what I look like. And I’ll still be unrecognizable to everyone else, considering I’ve returned with 60 more tattoos than I had the last time anyone saw me here.

“I don’t give a fuck,” I say smiling at her, turning away to get to the kitchen. She says something else, but my mind’s already set on eating. The time from the last meal we had on the plane and taking the jeepney here has burrowed a hole in my stomach. 

It wasn’t until I started threading through the crowd of people in my childhood home that I realized I was invisible to everyone else too. At the family gatherings we had in the States, it was impossible to move a couple of feet without a relative engaging in a conversation, trapping you for 15 or so minutes, having to explain what you’re doing, if you’re in school, and if you have a girlfriend. 

Today, I was able to make it to the kitchen, grab a plate of food, and head into the living room without so much anyone batting an eye at me. I wonder if these people think I’m someone who had just walked in from the street and was here for the free food. 

I spot a small island in the middle of our living room, with only one inhabitant, a young boy with his eyes glued to the video game he’s playing on the TV screen. The couch he’s sitting on, formed like a gray fortress with its cushions spanning from one corner to the next, has its only opening in the direction of the T.V. screen. 

I hate kids. I found this out while teaching English classes to a group of middle schoolers. And looking at this kid, he’s definitely in that age range. But he’s enveloped by a video game, and I can’t blame him. He doesn’t even notice when I sit on one corner of the couch, for some reason afraid to sit right next to him. 

While eating, I turn to the TV. and notice he’s playing Resident Evil. The newest game in the series, of course. I don’t think someone would voluntarily seek out the pixelated first game for any reason. Except when I was 16 and had my first job, I did. I got pieces of the Playstation 1 console from varying thrift shops and grabbed a copy for twenty dollars at a local game shop. 

Around this time, my mom had offhandedly mentioned a detail about my father. “Oh, Resident Evil was one of his favorite games.” She does this from time to time, giving me pieces of him, and for a while, I felt like it was my responsibility to put him together. So when I did come to meet him, we wouldn’t need much catching up to do. 

I searched for bits of my father in that first game. I loved the horror, the B-rated movie voice acting, and how hard it is to survive in the game. It was, I guess, the first hard game I’ve ever played. Surviving wasn’t guaranteed, and instead, challenged you to do so. Life, I later learned, is much harder than the game. 

I found my own reasons to love the game and hoped one day, when our father remembered he had two other kids running around in the world, we’d meet and talk about how awesome that game was. 

This dream rotted in my brain, and I didn’t realize parts of it were still molding in there until I saw this kid playing the game. His hair is long, draping all over his head, and his bangs split down the middle, probably so he can see what he’s playing. 

The words jump out of my mouth. “You know, I used to love this game,” I say, the words floating into our shared space, and crashing down to the ground without acknowledgment. 

Is it wrong for me to assume he doesn’t know English? No, he absolutely does, the school system here makes it a requirement, going as far as even enforcing "English Only" rules in the hall. This kid just doesn’t care. 

I decide to finish the rest of my food and head back to my mom to complain when he asks, “Which one’s your favorite ?”

Oh, a response. I mean, it’d be rude to start it and back out now.

“I started with the first one, but my favorite has to be the 3rd one, where they’re in the city.” 

He laughs at me.

“What ?” I ask.

“That means you’re old.”

I laugh, annoyed but impressed with how fast he got me.

“Okay, then which one’s your favorite ?”

He pauses his game and gives me a little side-eye.

“The 3rd one,” he says quietly, embarrassed.

I laugh and he joins me, not caring he roasted both of us unintentionally. 

“Oh if you like that game, you’ll recognize this,” I say, pulling my shirt sleeve higher to reveal a tattoo of a green plant on my shoulder.

“Oh no way,” he exclaims, “you have a green herb drawing?”

“Oh yeah, a drawing,” I say, pulling back my original words. 

“My Dad would think that’s so cool.”

I mean, if I’m not going to have my own Dad’s validation, I'll take some from his. His next question catches me off guard. 

“Are we related ?”

Oh surely I should’ve thought this could’ve been a possibility, I’m somehow related to everyone in this house.

“I don’t know,” I say, slipping a bit of a teacher's voice from years past, “what’s your name ?”

“Arthur! But that’s my dad’s name, so everyone just calls me Art.”

I’m ripped in half, split in the same way I bisected my Dad’s name to make room for my mother’s. And underneath this 25-year-old body covered in tattoos, is the confused boy I’ve always been. Now there are two young boys on this couch too big for both of us. 

This is Dad’s other kid. Wait, no, that’s not right, I’m the other kid. He stayed and raised him, and even gave him his name too. Two Arthurs sitting on a couch tangled in the mess my father made. Fucker can’t even be bothered to clean up.

“Hey,” Art says, “it’s rude to ask for someone’s name and not to tell them yours.”

I realized I sat in my void a little too long, trying to comprehend what was happening. It’s too big though, it won’t fit nicely in my hands, and it might be unbearable to carry.

This time I force the words out of my mouth, “My name is Archi,” I say, the teacher in me reminding myself to smile anytime I introduce myself to a student. Typically, I’d use Mr.Arboleda for my students, but for reasons I think anyone can understand, I don’t.

“That’s such a cool name,” Art exhales, “I think my dad’s real lazy, couldn’t come up with anything good or original and just gave me his.”

Oh, I laugh pretty hard at this.

I thought I was the only one getting hand-me-downs from him.

I watch him play for a while longer before a woman approaches us. She’s in a bright yellow dress, has hair that’s been chopped to her shoulders, and layered by the wind. 

“C’mon Nak, you haven’t eaten yet, you can play more after.”

I glance at her and the portrait me and my mom painted together shatters. No long black hair, or red dress carried by the wind. The word mistress now feels wrong to have ever used. It makes me wish my mother and I directed a derogatory term toward my father instead of her. 

“Bye Kuya Archi! I’ll talk to you more later!”

I smile and wave bye at him, worried that if she hears my voice, it’ll reveal who I am. I don’t know, maybe I also inherited Arthur’s voice. 

I’m the youngest in the family, so I’m rarely called Kuya by others. It’s usually reserved for older brothers and cousins. But the word Kuya. I repeat him saying it over and over again in my head not wanting to lose it to my fading memory. The word wraps around me nicely. I hold onto the edges of the word, not wanting to let it go.

I put my plate down, and walk over to my grandmother, sleeping in a white and gold casket. I look into it, say a small prayer in my head, and ask her a question.

“Why is our family like this?”

No response of course, but rude. 

I head to the backyard again, to see the line of people my mom has to greet and reconcile has dissipated. She turns to me as I walk up to her, asking, “Did you already eat ?” 

I ignore it, and hug her, wrapping my arms in the other half of my name.