1.
When I received an email that I was awarded a half-tuition scholarship for a writing workshop I was about to attend, I thought it was a scam. The message was written in purple-pink text, bright against the dark mode of my app, and it came from an address I hadn’t previously corresponded with about the workshop. But after determining it wasn’t a scam—they didn’t ask for any private information, and under my bio on the official cohort webpage appeared text saying I was awarded the scholarship—I was the one who felt like a fraud.
2.
The scholarship was from PAWA, Philippine American Writers and Artists.
I didn’t know the workshop gave out scholarships; I didn’t know this scholarship existed; and I didn’t know my listing of my identities and background would get me that scholarship—just for being Filipino.
I include my grandfather in the drop-down menus and write-ins of every survey, quiz, sheet that asks me—not in these words—“what are you?” (and allows me to pick more than one bubble), because if I didn’t, that would be erasing him, half of my mom and a quarter of me, and it would be a lie if I didn’t.
Even if it feels like a lie when I receive something like a scholarship just for writing
“Filipino.”
3.
I was told growing up “you’re a quarter” of each thing,
like a dollar bill, but with the weight of making sure you can keep all the pieces together, to be able to buy what you need at the dollar store.
And though I am curious, because I suspect it’s probably not a clean-cut even-split like the oral stories passed down through the generations, I don’t spit in the tube because an ambiguous ‘they’ in imagined lab coats will sequester my DNA and weaponize the secrets of my own health that even I don’t know yet, when all I want, maybe, is to know where my ancestors come from and not a possibility of how I’m going.
4.
I don’t remember exactly when it was that I asked, was told, or gained consciousness of what I am, but others often asked—and still do.
My fourth grade teacher: What kind of Asian are you?
I said, “Japanese.” Just Japanese.
When Disney’s animated Mulan came out on VHS, I ran around the house screaming, “I’m Chinese!” and though I am—my Chinese grandfather handed us red envelopes when he saw us around New Year—Obāchan, my Japanese grandmother, looked at me and said, “No, you’re Japanese.”
My other grandma, the one who grew up in Texas, who loved dancing the Macarena, once called me Elico—“men’s names end in -o in Spanish,” she said—because I was trying to be funny by calling her Grandpa. I don’t know if I fully understood then that she was Mexican.
I don’t know when I became aware of the weight
of it all, the weight of the quarters in my pockets that bounce with each step towards wherever I’m going.
5.
As I got older, I became more aware of others’ tendency—nagging curiosity and desire—to put in their two(enty-five) cents.
Once at an airport, the security guard looked at my mom, my sister, and me. Him: Do they have different fathers?
A classmate of my sister’s in high school thought my sister and I were just unrelated carpool buddies, even though we have the same last name.
A friend of my sister’s, who knows she is Filipino—among other things—asked “So what are you again?” after meeting me, because he probably didn’t think I looked so Filipino.
6.
When I got that scholarship, I felt it was just because my grandfather, whom I never met because he died a year before I was born, married Obāchan.
I felt it was because I have “lineage”—evidenced by my mom’s maiden name that my Filipino friends tell me “is very Filipino”—but not the cultural know-how, so much so that as a child, I thought the vinegary chicken adobo that simmered in the pot as Obāchan cooked for dinner was Japanese
because she’s Japanese
so she must cook Japanese food,
right?
7.
I was maybe in the double digits when I realized that chicken adobo is
Filipino,
that my grandfather probably taught Obāchan how to make it, which then made its way into the rotation of my childhood dinners—
from the Philippines from his parents to my grandfather to his wife to their daughters to their granddaughters into their stomachs, digesting, breaking down, nutrients, nourishment.
8.
Though I never met my grandfather—who, according to my mom “was very generous,” would “splurge to get the best” to provide for them, to watch over them—he was still at the table, his phantom marinating in silence yet simmering loud enough for the magicians who pull coins out ears to see leftovers of him in my face and ask “are you Filipino?”
When that happens, I’m surprised—my face twisted like I just had something vinegary-good.
But, aren’t we all sixteenth, eighths, quarters, halves, full; fully ourselves, two halves of what our parents pass down from their parents from their parents from their parents dot dot dot, so much that you might have your grandmother’s nose (that neither of your parents have) or you might have a hair color two shades lighter from a great-aunt (possibly) or you look (like a) grand from a certain angle in the right lighting, but at just that angle in only that lighting.
Even if you’re not split into quarters the way I am—the way others ask me to identify, the way I was told to identify—aren’t we all just constructed, made up
of p i e c e s ?
9.
Still, I marinated in the feeling of being undeserving after I got the scholarship I didn’t know existed just because my grandfather, whom I never met, was Obāchan’s husband. But this is what came from the leftovers, like chicken adobo dinner, a trace of a feature on my face, lost names buried in dusty records, and forgotten history blown away by the wind, like ashes.
10.
From the stories, I know how he goes: Alzheimer’s
(would that show up on the DNA tests, too?).
On my trips to Japan as a girl I would visit the cemetery with Obāchan to, not see his grave, but to stare at his urn, sitting in a cubby in a cemetery on a hill.
Inside, all in little p i e c e s
Beyond the urn, he spent much of my life in a picture frame that Obāchan kept on a shelf in her room, behind a little tea candle she would light from time to time, a teacup she would refill with water, and a miniature bottle of whiskey.
So he doesn’t get thirsty, she’d say.
As a child, I’d have silent stare-offs with his portrait, his eyes following my movement as I bounced from one of four corners to the next. The shelf was mounted high, floating higher than my eye level at that age. I’d look up, and see
him watching over
me.
Elica Sue’s nonfiction has also appeared in The Christian Science Monitor’s The Home Forum and Canary. She is a VONA alumna, and a life-long Southern California resident.