Home Is Where by Ligaya Fruto - 1555 Words

HOME IS WHERE . . . by Ligaya Victoria Fruto (Anglo-American and Filipino Literature Fifth Edition, pg 398) The girl sat tensely on the edge of the Consulate bench, her face carefully devoid of expression. The bird-of paradise pattern was gaudy on her aloha shirt, the thong sandals looked slovenly on her feet, and on her head, riding the loose curls, was perched a big hibiscus flower. Her hands were tightly fisted in the pockets of her old jeans as she listened to the older woman seated before the passport clerk’s desk. She looked at the woman, then at the clerk, with one eyebrow slightly raised. Too many movies, the clerk thought amusedly as he listened to the older woman talk. He smoothed the passport application that she handed him and†¦show more content†¦The woman clasped her handbag. She glanced at her daughter, then turned to the clerk, her paler face flushing a little in embarrassment. â€Å"I have always wanted to go back,† she said softly. â€Å"And now that my husband and I . . . Besides, I have the money . . .† The clerk nodded understandingly. He took up the batch of papers before him and examined the divorce decree. Extreme mental cruelty, it said, and a smile almost escaped him. The phrase somehow seemed absurd. He looked at the woman with overt interest, wondering what type of a man she had married. Perhaps a man with some education, for it was plain that the woman had schooling. He noted the sureness of the handwriting on the application form. Her speech, too, was not the pidgin English that most plantation folk employed. â€Å"The women here.† The woman burst out, as though in spite of herself. â€Å"Ah the women here . . .† Her face showed her disdain. She remembered with acute suffering the young bride who had accompanied her husband to this land fo promise, and the almost unbearable homesickness which had made adjustment not only to a new husband but to new surroundings so pitifully difficult. She recalled to the loss of first one child and then another and at the coming of Lucille. Lucille was her last child, the only one who had lived. Staring at the divorce decree, she thought of her husband’s infidelities. She thought of them not too much as separate experiences but as haziness piled upon