Exactly Here, Exactly Now
It's a thin volume of 10 stories by Nadine Sarreal, she's one of my internet friends who doesn't fail to say "hi" now and then [via FLIPS], like a big sister who makes sure everything is alright with me. I've always wanted to read what's in the mind of Nadine Sarreal.
I just came home from work wondering if I'd work-out or surf the net. Instead, I decided to re-assemble my sound system which has been lying under the cover of dust since I moved to my townhouse last February. It was a quick assemly, I've assembled this sound system tens of times already, as many times as my many moves here in America. I told myself to just stay put, lie on the sofa and keep quiet. I played 5 cd's of Mozart. I picked out from my shelf Nadine's collection of stories published by Giraffe in 2000 and ok, finished it in one sitting.
I feel close to Nadine because of some similarities between the two of us. We're both graduates of UP with college degrees outside of fiction writing. She's a Statistician and I am a Physical Therapist. But she holds an MFA in Vermont College in Montplier - and the comparison ends there. Her mastery of writing in English language is well-demonstrated by the manner she attacks her fiction. Her craft is flawless, smooth, written with ease. Her writing becomes natural and that makes her characters more real and believable.
And what an ensemble of characters she presents: A faith healer. A naked woman in a tree. A man bound home in a typhoon. A shoe saleslady. A mother in a quiet family. A pregnant woman. A wife waiting for her husband's moments of lucidity. A domestic helper in Hongkong. A woman driven to tell the truth. An immigrant couple trying to buy a place in America.
It would take a long, long article to review all her stories but as I always do in reviewing collection of stories, I pick one or two and dwell in them throughout.
To me, three stood out among her stories.
Case 2183-93, Angela Cabading, Age 26
Exactly Here, Exactly Now
Lakeside
They stood out because in them, I felt the heart of Nadine speaking to me. These stories reflect her passion for the underdog people, the intimacy and pain of a woman, and the feeling of unease and awkwardness in staking a claim of place in an alien country.
Though these are fiction, they do not fail to picture for me the reality of truth or truth of reality.
Angela came to an Asian country as a domestic without even knowing where her place of work was. She faced all types of insults, abuses, fear, threats, even rape only because she wanted to help her needy family back home.
Many years from now, when we Filipinos will no longer enslave ourselves in other lands, Angela Cabading will be remembered the way other Filipinos who sacrificed and suffered for us are remembered. Stories like hers should be enough to make us re-think about our people and our approach at improving their lot.
Everytime someone pokes a finger on a Filipino and insults him/her for being Filipino hurts me as much as it hurts many of us.
Angela Cabading is no different from the many Filipino women who gave their lives for us - for example, the Filipina spies who prostituted themselves to the Japanese to secure our freedom - Angela belongs to them.
Angela Cabading is the one who speaks to me in whispers. She's one I imagine visiting me in my living room who talks without hysteria, without regrets, without let up because:
"Ay basta. I have to work. I have to hold on. I can cry later, maybe at night. But while there is light, I must keep on working."
Really, how many of us heard her story among millions of our domestic workers abroad without even stopping to think?
In her story "Exactly Here, Exactly Now", Nadine fearlessly narrates the intimate thoughts of a woman. I call it fearless because how many stories are there verbalizing the thoughts of a woman making a "routine" love? I've heard lots of jokes about it but not this real. It is more especially strange to me - me being gay and single who haven't had any "deep and emotional" intimacy with anybody. I feel like a voyeaur in this story, watching a woman's private moves, reading her private thoughts.
And this story is also affecting me on a different level:
How many times have I said to myself that every novel I finish is my child. Every novel I try to make is my pregnancy. Based on my outputs, all my children, though beautiful to my eyes, remain incomplete because they aren't published in a regular manner. And you just don't know how excited I become when I get half-way a fiction work like a novel, despite knowing that it pleases only me, still, I wake you up, my dear reader, I wake you up :
"She walks to the bed and sits down, crying, "Come and see. Come and see. We almost had a baby." Andro holds her, still too sleepy to put together what she's saying not understanding when she tells him, "It was a baby. It doesn't matter about the other things, about the phone or the car or my work. It was a baby.""
There are times when you don't care whether your child is perfect or mediocre or ugly or incomplete. Just the thought you had it is enough. And that's the way I think about my writing.
The story "Lakeside" holds special meaning to me. I fully understand what Nadine is tying to tell me in this story. I bought and sold condos and townhouses in America and, not only is the location important to me, I also want to know who my neighbors are. For me I always check the race mixture wherever I'd like to stay. Maybe it's just me - but I simply cannot imagine myself in a pure white, or pure black, or pure Asian, or pure whatever neighborhood. Looking for a place in an alien country is not exactly easy. Money is involved, credit is always checked, independence is valued, and the types of neighbors is a premium consideration. It is not always easy as the story goes; especially when you discover that the most you aspired for fails expectations. And always, the best alternate route is the way back.
Thanks Nadine for these great stories.