But over time, Nanay coaxed me into spending more of my days in the home that represented the pinnacle of her dreams, her final ascension from peasant farmer to prosperous businesswoman. She pointed out the built-in bathtub next to my own room and reminded me that I liked the idea of having a door to close when I read or studied, even though I was afraid to find it locked from the outside in the middle of the night. I relented one day and agreed to sleep in my bedroom in the corner of that house, on the second floor where I could survey the fields we owned beyond the paved yard and the mango orchard at the edge of our property, one of several parcels of land my grandparents had amassed. I slept in my bed made of dark wood and carved with curlicue patterns, hoping not to dream of Mama’s old apartment, where I first slept on a bed and was beaten. After a peaceful sleep, I went downstairs the next morning and rested my head against the cool marble floor, then spent most of the day reading there, occasionally taking breaks to cool my head again. I looked up not at the bundles of thatch I was used to but at a series of concentric wooden rectangles that started from the edge of our ground-floor living room, polished and varied in shades of brown, which converged onto a crystal chandelier in the middle. The wood was attractive enough, though the chandelier struck me as a cheap try at those fancy flourishes in American TV shows. I avoided looking at it but decided it was comfortable on the floor and I could get used to the house after all.

—

As our jeepney passed the lone movie theater in Baliwag on the way to the market one afternoon, I noticed a poster for an American movie—I could tell just from the muted colors and the orderliness of the design, in contrast to the more chaotic posters that accompanied Filipino films. I told Nanay Coro that I wanted to stop, so she rapped on the roof of the jeepney as the vehicle ground to a halt and we got out.

I’d never seen our local theater show an American movie, so I was determined to see this one no matter what it was. When I got to the modest lobby, I saw that the poster was for Dead Poets Society and showed a group of young men in red sweaters carrying an older man who wore a long-sleeved shirt and tie. Nanay Coro wasn’t interested in seeing a movie in a language she barely knew, so she agreed to let me see Dead Poets Society on my own while she went to the market.