“Yes, if I can go to the carnival every day.”

Mama chuckled as she took a lick of her cone, and she seemed impossibly young to me. She had me when she was seventeen, and though she was a few years older than Papa’s younger sister Tita Jackie, my dutiful aunt who had just started college seemed more adult.

“I have something to tell you,” she said as she turned and smiled. “You’re going to have a sibling.”

I looked down at her stomach and saw the beginnings of a bump.

“Aren’t you happy?” she asked when I didn’t respond. “We’ll be a bigger family.”

“I like my family in Talacsan.”

A flash of movement as if the world sped by; a sting of pain. Mama had slapped me across the face. I started to cry.

“Be quiet or I will leave you here and never come back.”

As I rubbed my cheek, I wondered if I could find the way to Talacsan on my own. It didn’t seem so hard, though Nanay Coro had warned me many times that someone would kidnap a white boy like me if I wandered off alone. I needed Mama. I stifled my tears.

“Your grandmother poisoned you against me.”

I didn’t want to get slapped again, so I said nothing. I stifled more tears and imagined I was so white I was invisible. Somehow, I managed to hold on to my cone, as the ice cream melted and began to coat my fingers. Mama told me it was time to go, and I followed her back to the bus. I pretended not to notice when she held out her hand.

—

I saw little of Mama and Papa in Caloocan. I was alone indoors most days, leery of the unfamiliar kids in my neighborhood who gawked at me. Also, the only open space to play outside was the street, and I was afraid of getting run over.

Mama left for work early and often came home when I was already asleep, bringing people who woke me up with their chatter, though she warned me not to come downstairs while she was with friends. My only companion was our maid Charito, who kept me fed and shared a bed with me.