"Permanent Resident", Jocelyn Suarez
At the coffee shop, I once saw a man brush the seat of a plastic chair even though it was clean. Two days since arriving and I still feel the dry heat on my skin. The water back home felt a lot colder than here. I dipped in the sea and my skin shivered. My skin, now burnt. Not in the way the other Chinese girls’ skin burns, all tender and pink, but browning like the ageing bark of a tree. There are no pelts of redness on my cheeks even though I bathed in sunshine for two straight weeks. Yet the uncle at the hawker stall still continues to say “you dun look leh”. When I showered in my HDB unit today, I forgot to turn on the heater and didn’t miss a thing. I ordered teh peng and wondered why it didn't taste like Nestea. The pork I got didn’t have enough skin, the chicken was too lean. My English is coming back into its original feel. But no matter where I go, my tongue still twists. I am missing the dry heat of the sun on my skin. There are too many shelters here and not enough sea breeze. The stars have hidden behind streetlamps. And I can’t find a single grain of sand on my cai png. I do not know if I am missing home or if my body just remembers the place where it was born. I do not think it knows how to define home anymore. One of my oldest friends said to me: “there’s the lah I was waiting for” and I have yet to learn how to feel about that. When I speak Tagalog, I pause only to stutter. I never learned the dialect of my mother. Before I left to go visit her home - not mine anymore - I told my boyfriend that I have thought in English for so long I no longer consider myself bilingual. When I translate the stories of my titos and titas for him, I chew their words like gravel against my teeth. Every English word I use feels like a collar unfit for the shape of my throat. In two weeks, my skin will remember to curdle without the warmth of a shower heater. I go to a coffee shop and I brush the seat of the plastic chair. Even though it is clean.
Notes:
Nestea is common brand of iced tea in the Philippines
titos and titas are the Tagalog words for uncles and aunts respectively