A teacher once asked if I lived on the dirty side of the Philippines, I had to think what she meant—if she meant a part easier to ignore homeless kids on the streetsides with cardboard blankets curled up like street dogs; if dirty meant poor meant eating rice with soy sauce ‘cause mama couldn’t afford meat; if poor meant illiterate meant when my dad dropped high school and did drugs instead; if illiterate meant stupid meant when his brother grew up not knowing how to read and write; if stupid meant me in that new white school barely knowing English, I felt like a weathered rock knuckled down when I pronounced a word wrong from a sheet of paper to a shit of paper—I was smoothed away to my smallest form to the point I said, “no, I do not come from the dirty side.” I carried myself upright as if I always had access to clean clothes, to clean water, to a clean life.
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To Be Dirty
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