Assistant Editor Maggie Su: While this piece takes the form of a numbered list, the three sisters at its heart evade easy categorization. Geosits’s prose spans decades and moves the reader from “bug screens” in the Philippines to “Filet-o-Fish sandwiches” in America. In just under 300 words, “Three Filipinas” is a potent meditation on immigration, assimilation, and loss.
Three Filipinas
1. They are born and raised in monsoon season, brushing humidity through their raven hair like all the other island girls do. They are eight, five, and four, the perfect ages for climbing trees, slicing mangoes, playing make-believe. On the veranda, they are separated from the jungle-city by only the bug screen; when the nannies are not looking, they creep out into the world, they explore, they meet the man in the van on the road outside their home, they almost get in. When the nannies stop them, they do not know why.
2. They are the only island girls at school. When they say We are Filipino, the Texans say How exotic, How far away, How crazy! Their oldest sister is crazy. When she runs away from their new home, her sisters follow her in the car; they are watching the road, they are shouting her name out the window, they are doing homework in the back seat. Their mother does not care if the oldest sister comes back, if she is pregnant, if her Camel-smoking boyfriend is slapping her around. They are still three little girls, seventeen, fourteen, thirteen. They eat Filet-O-Fish sandwiches until they are American.
3. They get all-white husbands, half-white babies, almost-white lives. They are island girls only on Sundays now, when they dip tapa in vinegar in their parents’ kitchen, or maybe it is the condensed milk in their coffee. They have stopped aging at thirty-seven, they dye gray hairs brown, they do not see the oldest sister anymore. They leave their husbands, they lose their jobs, they raise their grandchildren. They stay up until 5:00 a.m. playing card games. They are living the American dream, they never wonder why they left the island, they never make plans to go back.
Harrison Geosits is a peddler of creative nonfiction, native Texan, and all-around decent guy. His work can be found or is forthcoming in Split Lip Magazine, Foliate Oak, Redivider, Jellyfish Review and Wildness, among others. He prefers wine from the box. You can stalk him on Twitter at @HGeosits.
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