“Your life will be better in America.”

“You don’t know that,” I insisted, old enough to understand that Nanay Coro had no idea what America was really like, except for blind faith and colonial brainwashing. “I can become a doctor here. And when you get old, I can help you manage your business.”

Nanay Coro shook her head. “You won’t be happy if you stay. You’ll always wonder how vast your life could have become.”

My grandmother used a word, “malawak,” that I’d never known someone apply to a life. I’d heard it used to describe endless fields of land, the vast river that bounded our village on one side, the ocean that lay between me and America. I had never crossed that river, never even been beyond the main island of Luzon where we lived. I knew what she meant, that as much as I loved home, I’d also spent an entire childhood wondering about the possibility of America, the new ways of life I would find there, the person I could become. My grandmother forced me to admit that the right direction, no matter how painful, was toward that infinite horizon.

“I can always come back,” I said, though even then I suspected that once I left, I could never return for good.

—

When June and the start of school came around, I couldn’t bear to be without my friends, so I decided to continue at St. Paul’s even though we were leaving for America in August. I wanted to pretend a while longer that my life wouldn’t change. The work also distracted me from the wait, and sooner than I expected, it was time for us to go.

The weekend before my flight, Samuel and my gang of friends drove to Eight Waves for the last time, in two cars so I didn’t get to sit on Samuel’s lap. As we stripped down to our briefs in a dressing room that smelled of mildew, I marveled at how good of an actor I’d been, for no one to suspect my secret all those years. I looked in Samuel’s direction, and he smiled at me like it was just another day.

We played in sky blue water, wrestling one another without care, traces of our boyhoods still in our touch. They were the last boys with whom I could be so intimate without the guilt of my desire. Except for Samuel, who I didn’t touch because it felt perverted, though I allowed him to put his arm around me, reciprocated his pat on my back. I sat on his shoulders to play a game of topple and willed myself not to show any signs of want, even if he accepted my obvious love for him, the love of a friend. Or maybe he knew that my love was more but tolerated it because I was about to leave his life.