SO you’re married to an Australian? Yes, I’m a mail-order bride. You know one of those “little brown f___ing machines,” ha ha ha, from the poverty-stricken and depressed area of Western Mindanao in Southern Philippines who advertise their names in the newspapers in the pen pal section hoping to be read by travelling white males.
I met Andrew, a 50-year-old Newcastle retrenched steelworker, five feet nine tall, stocky, a champion in bed. He is well-endowed and I am proud of him.
I was 22 and had recently graduated with a veterinary degree from the University of Southern Mindanao. When Andrew saw my details from the paper, he thought that I was not only attractive but smart and talented. He said that I could practise as a vet in the land down under.
What to make you his sex doll?
Oh well, sex is part of life, isn’t it? Besides, I also want to try another life, another world, where people, they said, do not eat rice every day but loads of potatoes, pasta, boiled vegetables and half-cooked steaks. I can asked Andrew if I still have my rice and dried fish there.
We’ve been married for four years’ now. With 28 years age difference between us, I have lots of tales to tell you. No, they’re not about him being unable to get it up again…our marriage is beyond that. He was an outgoing white Australian male and I’m a demure Filipina.
Tell us one story
He came home one day and pinched his nose because of the fish I was frying. “What the hell?” he stormed.
“It’s fried dried fish.”
“Throw it away. It’s disgusting! It stinks!” He was sneezing. “It smells like a dead rat.”
“Excuse me.” I turned towards him. “Did you just call my food disgusting?”
Before I could finish, he rushed to the toilet and came back with some toilet spray. He sprayed the kitchen and the burner surrounding my pan. He stared at the fish, shook his head, shook his head and decided to spray them, too.
I quickly grabbed the pan and poured the hot oil and fish onto his head.
He howled, running to the toilet. “You’ll pay for this!”
I was scared of what I had done, but the insult and anger I felt outweighed my fear of burning his scalp. Anyway, his hair grew back after a couple of weeks.
Since then, he’s never commented about my food.
One night, he tore off a piece of my fish, piled it with boiled rice and threw it into his mouth. He nodded and said it wasn’t that bad, but he was never ever keen on it. I understand that.
I also understand, how he likes avocado spread on toast. I used to despise avocado getting tortured like that when it is an expensive ingredient for a milkshake or fruit salad. Now I like to have avocado in my sandwiches, especially with smoked salmon, more than anything else.
Do you get on with his family?
Yes, the first time I met Andrew’s family was at a barbecue at his brother’s house in Lismore. After the meal, everyone dove into the pool. Everyone was there from grandma to little baby. Realising that I was the only one left on dry land, I changed into a t-shirt and shorts as I hadn’t been able to buy a pair of swimmers yet, and jumped into the pool. My feet touched the bottom. I struggled to come back up to the surface but couldn’t coordinate myself. I remembered being taught how to float at a girl scout jamboree in Cotabato. I remembered I could kick hard and, even without stroking, I could propel myself to the edge. This time, I didn’t move. I raised my right hand and lifted my body up to breathe but it didn’t work. I wriggled my feet, shook my head and looked for some air, but it didn’t work. Someone pushed me up.
“Are you all right?” Andrew said.
I was embarrassed when I was inundated with advice that I should have swimming lessons; that they would only take five to six Saturdays; that the lessons were cheap because they were subsidized by the government; that they were easy; that I should just have to have the confidence to float in the water. A six-year-old even showed me how to tread water.
Andrew decided to take me to the nearby creek where he said he used to play as a kid. Unspoilt by the outside world, the creek was at the very top of the Clarence River. Surrounded by lush, tall trees, the location looked secluded Birds could be heard chirping.
“Go and have a dip. No one’s here,” Andrew said.
“I don’t have any spare clothes.”
“Just go naked. We’re the only ones here, anyway.”
I stepped into the water and walked towards the middle. I saw some fish swimming past my feet. I splashed water onto my breasts. They were still firm, but after I’d had babies, they’d sag. I was waist-deep. I looked around and saw Andrew staring at me, smiling.
A crowd of kids came running towards the creek, excited to get to the water. I was stunned. The teacher yelled that there should be no diving as the water was shallow. I ducked down. I saw Andrew rushing towards me holding my t-shirt above the water. I asked for my underpants but he had forgotten them at the bank. I walked with my heads down while stretching my shirt as low as I could.
So, has he hit you yet?
Yes, but it was my fault, I suppose. One time, I withdrew some of our savings without letting him know. He found out after a few weeks and really got furious as we were trying to pay off the mortgage earlier. I had earned some of it, too. I worked as a vet nurse, you see.
“You could have talked to me about it!” he thundered.
But you know why I touched our savings? My father fell from a carabao as he and my mother were going home from the farm one evening. He was bleeding heavily on the way to the hospital. Eighteen kilometers away, one hour by tricycle. The hospital refused him entry because he had no deposits to give them. My sister called to ask for help. I sent money home immediately. When they had received my money, two days after the accident, my father was accepted into the hospital. Because of the delay in treatment, he had suffered more damage to the nerves. He developed glaucoma.
Have you been home since you come out here?
We’ve had three visits to the Philippines. On Andrew’s first visit, he went to out toilet. He looked round-up and down. The toilet was like a little hut, like a little house without a window. The roof was thatched brown hay. The walls were woven bamboo with tiny holes attracting daylight from the outside and giving good ventilation. You just had to pray that no one would actually peep at you directly from the outside. He locked the door by dropping a thin slab of wood onto two inserts, one on the door and the other on the wall, creating a boom bar preventing someone from entering the room. The floor was made up of layers of bamboo, plywood and topsoil. Right beside him was a tin full of water labelled Señorita Vegetable Edible Oil. In it was a floating plastic bucket that used to contain motor oil.
Andrew heard the cracking of the wood followed by the slight shaking of the floor but he didn’t seem to notice because it was normal for our toilet to make sounds and movements like that. He pulled his pants and underpants down and saw flies hovering around the hole, which was about a foot square. He took a closer look below, where all the human wastes landed, stacks of stools forming like a pyramid. The ones on the top were wetter, of course. He squatted. He was ready to push. He didn’t care about the smell and the sights of the toilet, he just wanted to push. He closed his eyes and pushed. He heard his droppings hit the pile below. He pushed again, and just as he inhaled, a fly landed on his nose, trying to get up his nostril. “Disgusting,” he said. He waved his hand to scare the insect, but it didn’t want to go away. He slapped his cheeks, trying to hit the fly. He got it. A small spurt of blood blotted his skin. He dreaded the thought that the blood squirted from the insect must have been a concoction of human excretions. He simply shook his head.
He pushed again. He heard another cracking. He felt himself falling. The floor was breaking, landing on the ground below. His feet, in his Colorado shoes, sank into the semi-wet excrement. How disgusting and embarrassing, he thought. He had never experienced such a thing in his entire life. How the floor is on the same level as his neck. He was scared to try to pull himself up in case the whole floor would give in. He felt he was bathed in the smell.
“Evelyn,” he cried. “Evelyn, come here. Fast!”
Before I could make the start of a dash, the dog ran towards the toilet and growled at him.
“Evelyn,” he yelled.
The dog’s bark seemed louder than his voice. He shouted and he shouted by no one came. The toilet was about fifty meters away from the house and, when you were partly buried like that, your voice didn’t project as much.
The dog got tired of howling at him. It sat there, then it started to whimper.
When I went to the loo, I found him there. He was half-crying as I helped him clean himself at our well.
So, what do you think about mail-order brides in general?
I have heard a story of a Filipina who was left bleeding and bruised by her husband in the bathroom after they had a fight over the abortion that he wanted her to have. He said he was too old to look after a crawling baby. He was too weak to kick a ball to the child on a football field. She was young. She was in tears. She had wanted a baby.
Andrew wasn’t like that. We’ve had wonderful times together for four years now. We love each other. It just happens that he is fifty and I am twenty-two. He’s an Aussie and I am a Filipina, a Filipino-Aussie, rather, he he he.
****
Erwin Cabucos is a teacher of English and Religious Education at Trinity College, Beenleigh, Queensland. He received High Commendation literary awards from Roly Sussex Short Story Prize and Queensland Independent Education Union Literary Competition in 2016. His short stories have been published in Australia, Philippines, Singapore and USA, including Verandah, FourW, Philippines Graphic Magazine and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. Erwin was born and raised in Cotabato Province, Philippines before entering Australia first on an AusAid Scholarship program, then through his Australian wife. He completed Master in English Education from the University of New England, Australia. ‘Fusion’ was first published in his book The Beach Spirit and Other Stories’.
Image credits: Artwork by Guillermo Altre Jr.