One night after his shift, our cabbie thought he ran her over. She favored taxi drivers or men who drove alone. She’d been run over by a car, he said, and now she crossed the street when least expected, causing accidents, wanting people to share her end. While scamming us he told the story of a woman dressed all in white who roamed Balete after dark. The driver had taken us along the edges of greater Manila and through Balete Drive, a long street in Quezon City that was supposedly haunted. “Look, I’ve been here before,” I told the driver, “and I know we don’t go through Quezon City to get to this hotel.” Five years ago, the cab ride from the airport had taken three hours and cost 800 pesos-about double the time and money that we should have spent, Sabine and I later found out. “Here on vacay?” he asked, just like an American would. “You American, miss?” he said, as he steered through the cars and bodies. Now my driver asked me the same question. “My mother’s from the Philippines, my dad is American,” she would say, in a practiced manner. It was a question she had to answer often.
This was the city where Sabine was born when I’d first met her, though, I couldn’t guess where she was from. There were older beggars too, with body parts missing: hands, a leg, an arm. Their eyes roamed, blank they couldn’t see a thing. They cupped their hands around their faces and squinted. When traffic stalled us, some boys lingered at my window, which was mirrored on the outside. They carried trays of gum and cigarettes. On the highway, skinny boys in wifebeaters dodged the traffic, some wearing flip-flops, others barefoot, their shins and calves dark with scabs. I looked for a cab and could only get a stretch limousine-the airport’s longest person hailing its longest car. She was only half Filipina, and 5’10”-almost as tall as me. Not that I had blended in much better with Sabine there. At arrivals each brown face would locate the cluster of faces it belonged to, and merge into a heap of arms and laughter and chatter.
But while Tokyo could match New York for all its rushing, solitary people, in Manila no one seemed alone but me. I towered, in both cities, over almost everyone. Manila’s airport is a bit like Tokyo’s but noisier, more crowded, its faces a few shades darker. In cities like these there is a demand for blue eyes and light hair and skin like milk. I’d been there once before, with my roommate Sabine.
Usually when I ran out of money I went to Tokyo-always a face cream or a push-up bra there that could use me. If you are beautiful and broke, one place left for you is Asia. Mia Alvar reads an excerpt from her debut story collection, In the Country, published in June by Knopf.
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