My Father Goes To Court
by Carlos Bulosan
Philippines
When
I was four, I lived with my mother and father and brothers and sisters in a
small town on the island of Luzon. Father’s farm had been destroyed in 1918 by
one of our sudden Philippine floods, so for several years afterward we all
lived in the town, though he preferred living in the country. We had as a next
door neighbor a very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the
house. While we boys and girls played and sang in the sun, his children stayed
inside and kept the windows closed. His house was so tall that his children
could look in the windows of our house and watch us as we played, or slept, or
ate, when there was any food in the house to eat.
Now, this rich man’s servants were
always frying and cooking something good, and the aroma of the food was wafted
down to us from the windows of the big house. We hung about and took all the
wonderful smell of the food into our beings. Sometimes, in the mornings, our
whole family stood outside the windows of the rich man’s house and listened to
the musical sizzling of thick strips of bacon or ham. I can remember one
afternoon when our neighbor’s servants roasted three chickens. The chickens
were young and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning coals gave off
an enchanting odor. We watched the servants turn the beautiful birds and
inhaled the heavenly spirit that drifted cut to us.
Some days the rich man appeared at a
window and glowered down at us. He looked at us one by one as though he was condemning
us. We were all healthy because we went out in the sun everyday and bathed in
the cool water of the river that flowed from the mountains into the sea.
Sometimes we wrestled with one another in the house before we went out to play.
We were always in the best of spirits and our laughter was contagious. Other
neighbors who passed by our house often stopped in our yard and joined us in
laughter.
Laughter was our only wealth. Father
was a laughing man. He would go into the living room and stand in front of the
tall mirror, stretching his mouth into grotesque shapes with his fingers and
making faces at himself; then he would rush into the kitchen, roaring with
laughter.
There was always plenty to make us
laugh. There was for instance, the day one of my brother came home with a small
bundle under his arm, pretending that he brought something good to eat, maybe a
leg of lamb or something as extravagant as that to make our mouth water. He
rushed into mother and threw the bundle into her lap. We all stood around,
watching mother undo the complicated strings. Suddenly a black cat leaped out
of the bundle and ran wildly around the house.
Mother chased my brother and beat him with her little fists, while the
rest of us bent double, choking with laughter.
Another time one of my sisters
suddenly started screaming at the middle of the night. Mother reached her first
and tried to calm her. M y sister cried and groaned. When father lightened the
lamp, my sister stared at us with shame in her eyes.
“What is it?” mother
asked.
“I’m pregnant!” she
said.
“Don’t be a fool,”
father shouted.
“You are only a child,”
mother said.
“I’m pregnant I tell
you!” she cried.
Father knelt by my sister. He put
his hands on her belly and rubbed it gently. “How do you know that you are
pregnant?” he asked.
“I feel it!” my sister
cried.
We put our hand on our belly. There
was something moving inside. Father was frightened. Mother was shocked.
“Who’s the man?” she
asked.
“There was no man,” my
sister said.
“What is it then?”
father asked.
Suddenly my sister opened her blouse
and a bullfrog jumped out. Mother fainted. Father dropped the lamp, the oil
spilled on the floor, my sister’s blanket caught fire. One of my brothers
laughed so hard he rolled on the floor.
When the fire was extinguished and
my mother was revived, we returned to bed and tried to sleep, but father kept
on laughing so loud we could not sleep any more. Mother got up again and lighted
the oil lamp; we rolled up the mats on the floor and began dancing about and
laughing with all our might. We made so much noise that all our neighbors
except the rich family came into the yard and joined us in loud genuine
laughter.
It was like that for years.
As time went on, the rich man’s
children became thin and anaemic, while we grew even more robust and full of
life. Our faces were bright and rosy, but theirs were pale and sad. The rich
man started to cough at night; then he coughed day and night. His wife began
coughing too. Then the children started to cough, one after the other. At night
their coughing sounded like the barking of a herd of seals. We hung outside
their windows and listened to them. We wondered what happened. We knew that
they were not sick from the lack of nourishment because they were still always
frying something delicious to eat.
One day the rich man appeared at a
window and stood there a long time. He looked at my sisters, who had grown fat
in laughing, then at my brothers, whose arms and legs were like the molave,
which is the sturdiest tree in the Philippines. He banged down the window and
ran through his house, shutting all the windows.
From that day on, the windows of our
neighbour’s house were always closed. The children did not come out anymore. We
could still hear the servants cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how tight
the windows were shut, the aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted
gratuitously into our house.
One morning a policeman from the
presidencia came to our house with a sealed paper. The rich man had filed a
complaint against us. Father took me with him when he went to the town clerk
and asked him what it was about. He told Father the man claimed that for years
we had been stealing the spirit of his
wealth and food.
When the day came for us to appear in court, father brushed his old Army uniform and borrowed a pair of shoes from one of my brothers. We were the first to arrive. Father sat on a chair in the centre of the courtroom. Mother occupied a chair by the door. We children sat on a long bench by the wall. Father kept jumping up from his chair and stabbing the air with his arms, as though we were defending himself before an imaginary jury.
The rich man arrived. He had grown
old and feeble; his face was scarred with deep lines. With him was his young
lawyer. Spectators came in and almost filled the chairs. The judge entered the
room and sat on a high chair. We stood in a hurry and then sat down again.
After the courtroom preliminaries,
the judge looked at father. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.
“I don’t need any
lawyer, judge.” he said.
“Proceed.” said the
judge.
The rich man’s lawyer jumped up and
pointed his finger to father. “Do you or do you not agree that you have been
stealing the spirit of the complaint’s wealth and food?”
“I do not.” father said.
“Do you or do you not
agree that while the complaint’s servants cooked and fired fat legs of lamb or
young chicken breasts you and your family hung outside his windows and inhaled
the heavenly spirit of the food?”
“I agree.” father said.
“Do you or do you not
agree that while the complaint and his children grew sickly and tubercular and
your family became strong of limb and fair in complexion?”
“I agree.” father said.
“How do you account for
that?”
Father got up and paced around,
scratching his head thoughtfully. Then he said, “I would like to see the
children of complaint, judge.”
“Bring in the children
of the complaint.”
They came in shyly. The spectators
covered their mouths with their hands. They were so amazed to see the children
so thin and pale. The children walked silently to a bench and sat down without
looking up. They stared at the floor and moved their hands uneasily.
Father could not say anything at
first. He just stood by his chair and looked at them. Finally he said, “I should
like to cross – examine the complaint.”
“Proceed.”
“Do you claim that we
stole the spirit of your wealth and became a laughing family while yours became
morose and sad?” father asked.
“Yes.”
“Then we are going to
pay you right now,” father said. He walked over to where we children were
sitting on the bench and took my straw hat off my lap and began filling it up
with centavo pieces that he took out of his pockets. He went to mother, who
added a fistful of silver coins. My brother threw in their small change.
“May I walk to the room
across the hall and stay there for a few minutes, Judge?” Father said.
“As you wish.”
“As you wish.”
“Thank you,” father
said. He strode into the other room with the hat in his hands. It was almost
full of coins. The doors of both rooms were wide open.
“Are you ready?” father
called.
“Proceed.” the judge
said.
The sweet tinkle of the coins
carried beautifully in the courtroom. The spectators turned their faces toward
the sound with wonder. Father came back and stood before the complaint.
“Did you hear it?” he asked.
“Did you hear it?” he asked.
“Hear what?” the rich
man asked
“The spirit of the money
when I shook this hat?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Then you are paid,”
father said.
The rich man opened his mouth to speak and fell to the floor without a sound. The lawyer rushed to his aid. The judge pounded his gravel.
“Case dismissed.” he
said.
Father strutted around the courtroom the judge even came down from his high chair to shake hands with him. “By the way,” he whispered, “I had an uncle who died laughing.”
“You like to hear my
family laugh, judge?” father asked.
“Why not?”
“Did you hear that
children?” father said. My sisters started it. The rest of us followed them
soon the spectators were laughing with us, holding their bellies and bending
over the chairs. And the laughter of the judge
was the loudest of all.
GEMS 2 Afro – Asian
Literature
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You must read this story because it was a good one. It has a humorous attitude that will it's readers smile, laugh and forget all of their worries for a while.