more from early 90s san fernando I love that someone bottle-fed a warthog, maybe you're a witch too! Besides the witch, the town was very Catholic I was a flower girl at my grandparents anniversary in a big cathedral I think it was just a big old church that they called a cathedral Back then there were dirt roads, nothing was paved There wasn't a port, we had to balance on a plank like in pirate stories I fell once I was a good swimmer so I tried to swim to shore But someone had grabbed the scruff of my shirt He didn't realise I was trying to swim away and I didn't understand why I wasn't moving The whole town knew about it before we even got to my grandparents house The American girl FELL and they couldn't pull her out There weren't any cars, lots of toktoks and motorcycles There was a run down barely standing building that used to be a cinema, we used to play on it like it was a jungle gym even though we weren't supposed to (because we weren't supposed to) Now it's all touristy, my mama's friend's hotel has a website Sometimes I'll find a youtube video where some backpacking Australian films the 'native' children behind him And I wonder if I'm related to them It's very weird I don't know if they still sell fish like they used to, market style They used to freeze Tang in these plastic tubes and call them ice lollies My mother said she found me selling them at the beach once A vendor's American baby marketing strategy I was eating the goods There was also a neighbor who kept a monkey in the yard The monkey's favorite thing was to pelt fruit at passers by and it really stung At least it wasn't poop There was a vhs rental kiosk in the square I remember watching Robocop with all my cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents So many people Now everyone's isolated and apart Or dead, a lot of people died When my mother was renovating the old house, my aunt called and said "Sorry, bad news, it's haunted" My sister still chuckles when she remembers my aunt's somber tone Construction workers saw "the white lady" (ghosts are always pale women in white victorian dressing gowns) We always said it was haunted when we were kids, we left out food for the ghost I like the ghost My friend told me I was Moana Maybe my mom was, she was trying to get away from an island, I keep dreaming about going back In the movie the grandma is reborn as a manta ray And Ticao is famous among divers because of the manta bowl (a species of giant manta ray live there) Maybe they're all giant manta now That island makes me believe in magic |