(this was my posting for Mad Hatters today. it is fiction but based on a true news story. there is a prequel to this story which can be found in my blog "a matter of distinction". the photo is of one of the rock islands of coron, palawan.)
My name is Chico. I remember my mother calling me Chico. But that was a long time ago. In another land. In another life. Now everyone calls me Ricky. That's the name Richard has chosen to call me.
Three years ago, I was seven and I had not seen a foreigner ever in my life. We lived in an island where the shores are covered with very fine and very white sands. Strangers, people from other islands, the main island and even from the capital far away to the north, would come to our island. Some took pictures, others just lie down on the white sand and rubbed lotion on their bodies. Most of the time, they buy the fish that my father and his friends caught from the sea.
My mother said Richard was not only a "stranger", he was also a "foreigner". Strangers were people we did not know, but foreigners were people we did not know who came from other lands. Not just from the capital city up north, but from another country.
Richard was a foreigner. He was from America. He had gold hair, blond they called the color. His eyes were blue, unlike ours. And his skin was very white. I had not seen such white person before and Richard looked like the gods in the local comics we read at the corner store. And he spoke a different language.
"What is your name?" he asked me.
"Chico," I replied. "My real name is Ricardo, but my Inang calls me Chico."
Richard, he said, is the American name of my name.
"Chico, how would you like to go to school in America?" Richard asked.
"Are there a lot of books in the school in America?"
"Of course! Not just books, but also radio, colored TV." I didn't understand what a TV was.
"I don't have a son, Chico. How would you like to be my son?"
"Okay," I said.
Richard gave my father two hundred dollars so I could be his son. My father took the money, but Richard didn't take me with him that day. When he came back, my father denied that he took the money. He said Richard only promised to give money but that he never gave it.
For two hundred dollars, my father said he could take me as his son. Richard pulled his wallet, took out some money and handed it to my father. My father took them and put it in his pants pocket. Richard gave him some big white papers and told him to sign them. My father shook his head, and told Richard if he was adopting me, he would have to pay more.
"How much more?" Richard asked.
My father looked at my mother who sat on the floor at the far end of the house cleaning a pan with soot-blackened bottom. She did not look at my father although I knew she could hear him.
"One thousand dollars!" my father said.
"Okay, so I gave you two hundred the other day, two hundred today, here's another two hundred." Richard pushed more bills into my father's hand. "That's all, and if you still didn't sign these papers, I will call the military and tell them that you thieved the money from me."
My father looked at the white papers. He handed them back to Richard saying, "I cannot read and I cannot write."
Richard smiled. "It simply says that you have given me permission to take Chico to America so he could study there." Then Richard took out a fountain pen and drop a little ink on my father's right thumb. "Here," he said, "press your thumb on this line here."
In America, Richard tells me my name is now Richard Jr., my nickname is Ricky and that he is now my father. He brings me to school every day. He buys me nice clothes and shoes. He takes me with him everywhere he goes, sometimes we drive, sometimes we ride our bikes. Richard always tells me that he is taking good care of me. But I do not believe him. Because at night, whenever he comes to my room and slips under the sheets with me, he hurts me.
- ©summerfield, 2009
