Reuniting With Strangers: A Novel

By Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio

Inspired by the work of Souvankham Thammavongsa, Catherine Hernandez and Wayson Choy, this unforgettable novel follows the reunification of Filipino caregiver families over one Canadian winter—and the mysterious progress of Monolith, who appears and disappears in their lives.

When five-year-old Monolith is taken from the Philippines to live with his mother in Canada, he immediately lashes out. Unable or unwilling to speak, he attacks her and destroys his new home.

Everyone wants to know why—and everyone has a theory. But unlike the solid certainty his name suggests, the answer isn’t so simple.

From a cliffside town in the Tagaytay highlands of the Philippines, to the Filipino communities in the desert of Osoyoos, the Arctic world of Iqaluit, the suburbs of southern Ontario, Sarnia's Chemical Valley, Montréal’s Côte-des-Neiges, and Toronto’s Little Manila, Austria-Bonifacio takes readers into the kaleidoscope of the Filipino diaspora, uncovering the displacement, estrangement, resilience and healing that happen behind closed doors.

As each chapter unfolds, truths are revealed in humorous, joyful, devastating and surprising ways: through an incisive caregiver's instruction manual, a custody battle over texts and e-mails, a disarmingly direct self-help guide, a series of desperate résumés, a kundiman songbook, and more.

Monolith appears again and again, as a misbehaving boy in a store, the subject of town gossip, a face in a fundraising campaign, a client in questionable care, a dying man’s beacon of hope—and an unlikely new friend.

Compellingly readable, incisive and resonant, Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio’s stunning debut opens a window into the homes and hearts of the Filipino-Canadian community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Release date: Sep 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781771623599

Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio

Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio is a Filipina-Canadian author, speaker and school board consultant who builds bridges between educators and Filipino families through her initiative, Filipino Talks. After completing her master’s degree in Immigration and Settlement Studies, she graduated from the Humber School for Writers and completed a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She was a finalist for the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award and has been published in various anthologies. She lives in Toronto, ON, where she is writing her second novel.

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Praise for Reuniting With Strangers

In these astonishing stories from the perspectives of migrant Filipino caregivers and their families, Austria-Bonifacio forces us to witness the emotional truths of those in servitude, and desperate to get a foot in the door.

— Catherine Hernandez

, award-winning author and screenwriter of Scarborough

Reuniting With Strangers expertly explores the pain of migration and the bottomless hope of family. Sacrifice threads through the community—a good parent is a good provider, and a good provider is one who leaves. But when a child is abandoned over and over again, his screams are the only sound the heart wants to make. This is the truth Austria-Bonifacio tells in language that is alive, contemporary, vivid. Read this book. You will see the world with fresh compassion.

— Kim Echlin

, author of Speak, Silence

A polyphonic chorus focusing on the lives of reunified Filipinx families, this collective of interlacing stories sings in a minor-major key of sorrow and joy, hurt and hope. Austria has invented a dazzling form of literary kundiman where all forms of love are present and invited. The result is a truly moving exploration of the psychic costs of separation, buoyed by a giant courageous heart.

— Kyo Maclear,

author of Unearthing

These are stories that love you, leave you and come back to you. These stories return jagged, complicated by their departure and grown in your absence. Austria-Bonifacio documents the Filipino Canadian diaspora with the eyes of a camcorder and the heart of a Filipino surviving outside of the Philippines—holding everything.

— Janice Lobo Sapigao

, writer, educator and Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets

Why do we call it ‘the motherland’ when it isn’t where our mothers are? With these words, Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio begins her extraordinary novel, inviting readers out onto the bridge that so many Filipino families navigate every day, for years, for decades, a crossing-over place of longing, confusion, anger, and complicated love. Here’s the real deal, a novel that opens up the world in a new way. Be prepared for goosebumps, tears and laughter.

— Karen Connelly

, author of The Change Room and The Lizard Cage

Reuniting

with

Strangers

A Novel

Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio

Douglas & McIntyre

Copyright © 2023 Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio

1 2 3 4 5 — 27 26 25 24 23

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright,

www.accesscopyright.ca

, 1-800-893-5777,

[e-mail]

.

Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.

P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park,

BC

,

V

0

N

2

H

0

www.douglas-mcintyre.com

Edited

by Caroline Skelton

Cover design

by Christine Mangosing

Text design

by Libris Simas Ferraz / Onça Publishing

Printed and bound

in Canada

Printed

on 100

%

recycled paper

Supported by the Government of Canada

Supported by the Canada Council for the ArtsSupported by the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council

Douglas and McIntyre

acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the

BC

Arts Council.

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

Title: Reuniting with strangers : a novel / Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio.

Names: Austria-Bonifacio, Jennilee, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20230237525 | Canadiana (ebook) 20230237533 |

ISBN

9781771623582 (softcover) |

ISBN

9781771623599 (

EPUB

)

Classification:

LCC

PS

8601.

U

88

R

48 2023 |

DDC

C

813/.6—dc23

For the 1200+ Filipino Talks students whose stories kept me awake at night.

Why do we call it the motherland when it isn’t where our mothers are?

Contents

Chapter 1

Monolith

Chapter 2

The Caregiver’s Instruction Manual

Chapter 3

What’s Best for the Girls

Chapter 4

Seven Steps to Reuniting with Your Teenage Daughter

Chapter 5

Résumé of a Husband in Love

Chapter 6

The Outsiders

Chapter 7

The Legacy of Lolo Bayani

Chapter 8

Little Manila Mumshie

Chapter 9

Monolith Speaks

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Chapter One

Monolith

I called him Monolith

because the name sounded as strong as he looked. At thirteen pounds, he was the biggest baby that our tiny country hospital had ever seen. When he was coming out of me, I felt like he was ripping me in half. I begged for medicine to stop the pain, but when the nurses ran to the parking lot to ask my husband if he had any more money, they found that he’d spent it all on bottles of Red Horse. He said that since I was the one who got pregnant, I was the one who had to deal with it. I fell unconscious in a pool of blood.

I knew that I needed to get my son as far away from his father as possible. When Monolith stopped breastfeeding, I put him in my younger sister’s care so I could leave the Philippines to work abroad. As I walked away, I heard him crying out for me, but I didn’t turn back. I decided that I would only look forward to the day we reunited.

To the day when it would all be worth it.

---

Four years later, when my sister brought Monolith to live with me in Canada, she told me not to come to the airport.

Ate Vera, I’ll ask my friends to drive us to your place. Before Monolith comes, clean up as much as possible. If you have breakable things, put them on the highest shelves. If you have sharp things, put them inside a locked closet. And make a big plate of eggs, garlic-fried rice, and extra Spam—Spamsilog is Monolith’s favourite. Ate, are you listening? Do you hear me?

I took a day off to polish the doorknobs, mirrors, and every inch of my cracked parquet floors, and I fried enough Spam for six little boys. The entire time, my face hurt from smiling.

When they arrived at my Kerr Street apartment, I was about to scream with joy when my sister shushed me. My baby boy was sleeping in her skinny arms, and she quickly set him down on my bed.

He’s five years old and already fifty-five pounds, she said, barely looking around at my freshly cleaned apartment. Her hair was so messy that it covered most of her face, and she kept pulling her sleeves down like she was cold, though the apartment was very warm.

You seem tired, Sora, I said. Why don’t you have a nap with him in my room? Rest ka muna—we can catch up when you’re awake.

My friends want me to stay with them until I fly back home tomorrow, she whispered, glancing at my son. They’re still outside. I don’t want to keep them waiting.

I was so disappointed. I knew she had to go back to the Philippines the next day, but I wanted to stay up all night and ask her about everything I’d missed in Monolith’s life. I wanted to know about his goals, his dreams, his likes and dislikes—I longed to hear every little detail. With the twelve to thirteen-hour time difference, there was never a good time to talk to each other. If I texted her, she would only say that she’d tell me everything when she saw me in person. I had been looking forward to this moment for years.

At least let me take you out for lunch before you leave tomorrow, I begged. There’s a Max’s Restaurant in Toronto, only an hour away from here. I heard their chicken tastes almost as good as it does in the Philippines. It can be our Christmas celebration!

Sora glanced at Monolith, her expression inscrutable. It’s too early to celebrate Christmas, she said. I’ll just text you when I get back home. She thrust an Incredible Hulk backpack into my arms, kissed his cheek, and hurried away.

She’s probably tired from the journey, I thought. It was a two-hour drive from our Batangas town on the Tagaytay Ridge to the Manila airport, a fifteen-hour flight to Toronto, and a thirty-minute drive from Pearson Airport to Oakville. Twenty hours of travel would be hard on anyone. And most of all, she’s probably devastated to leave her beloved nephew behind forever. Who wouldn’t be?

I tucked Monolith under my covers and curled up next to him, breathing in his scent. He smelled like warm sun, like lush earth, like damp tropical sweat, like home. His hands were surprisingly big for his age, and I intertwined his strong fingers in mine and sighed.

I had never been happier in my life.

---

I woke up to him screaming.

Calm down, Monobaby, I said in English, sleepily reaching out for my child and feeling my heart explode as he hurled himself into my open arms. But when he sank his teeth into my cheek, I instinctively yelped and shoved him away. He tumbled off the bed and fell so hard that his chin hit the floor and his mouth filled with blood.

I thought it was strange that he wasn’t crying. Maybe he was too startled to notice the pain.

Monolith, it’s me, it’s Mama, I said, reaching down to him. I’m sorry I hurt you. Can you forgive me?

He lunged at me again, his teeth grazing my other cheek. I willed myself to stay calm. I knew that he just needed to get used to me.

Monolith spotted my cellphone on the floor. He started tapping it insistently, making strange groaning noises. Since the camera had broken a long time ago, the phone was only good for making calls. I had no time for friends or social media, so I never got a new one. I never regretted this until I saw my darling son tapping at the cracked black screen in frustration.

You remember me from my calls to your iPad, don’t you? I know I didn’t have any video, but you heard my voice coming from your screen, didn’t you?

He tossed the phone aside and began to wail.

He must be homesick, poor thing, I thought.

You’re not in the Philippines anymore, I said, keeping my voice soft. You’re with me now. Let me clean you up, okay? Mama loves you. I’m so happy you’re in Canada. Here, do you want to see what it looks like? I smiled earnestly and opened the curtains wide.

Pushing me aside, he stood on his tiptoes, taking in his first look of his new home in early December: the brown brick Kerr Street apartments, the overcast Oakville sky, the empty suburban sidewalks. I wished there was enough snow to make it look like a winter wonderland, but it was the kind of morning when the snow was on pause, leaving behind trees so bare that they looked dead. As Monolith surveyed his new surroundings, he didn’t make a sound. I breathed a sigh of relief.

In his reflection, I saw myself. He had my expressive brown eyes, my curly black hair, and my long eyelashes, which looked so strange on a little boy. He also had his father’s flat nose and big mouth, which I hoped he would grow out of someday. Just like his hands, his head was also surprisingly large for his body. But still, he had turned into such a handsome child. His skin wasn’t even as dark as mine.

Look at this boy that I’ve made, I thought, my heart swelling with pride. Do you know how handsome you are? I asked, reaching out to touch his cheek.

The second my fingertip touched his skin, Monolith threw himself backwards and started to bang his head against the wall. He was cracking the cheap beige paint, but I couldn’t yell at him because the only expressions I wanted to use were in Tagalog, and I promised myself that I would only speak to him in English so that he would adjust to Canadian life as fast as possible.

I bit my tongue and let him do whatever he wanted.

He’ll stop, I told myself. I’d waited for so long. I’d sacrificed so much. He’ll stop eventually. Won’t he?

---

I tried calling Sora.

Monolith was probably acting so strangely because she’d abandoned him without properly explaining the situation. He was scared and just needed to hear her voice. I dialled her number again and again, but she wasn’t answering any of my calls.

Sora had always been the selfish one, refusing to support our family by working abroad like me, claiming that her never-ending studies were too important to leave behind. She wouldn’t focus on anything else but her beloved textbooks. When we were younger, I once set an egg timer beside her while she was studying and she didn’t even notice when it went off. Who knew what kind of guardian she’d been? No doubt Monolith had spent years being ignored just like that ringing egg timer. My poor baby.

I tried to be patient as he tore my apartment to pieces, knocking over my snake plants, ripping apart grocery store flyers, pouring glasses of water into each other and leaving puddles everywhere.

I tried to use the sweet words that I’d heard Canadian parents say in the park: Please make better decisions; I’m not disappointed in you, but in your actions; I need you to calm down, so would you like a time-out? but none of those pretty Canadian admonishments ever worked.

I wanted to turn to prayer, but Monolith made it impossible. Every time I started an Our Father or a Hail Mary, he would sink his teeth into my couch cushions and start shrieking. All I could do was repeat six words from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: Love is patient, love is kind; love is patient, love is kind. As I whispered the words over and over, I forced my mouth into a smile so that if Monolith turned to look at me, he would only see how much I loved him.

I thought about how my parents used to discipline me when I was young. They made me kneel on rocks, my little arms outstretched and palms turned up to the searing midday Philippine sky. I would kneel until I was shaking, until the skin on my knees cracked open and my hot blood and sweat seeped into the dirt. I would close my eyes and tell myself that the pain was good for me—that it would make me a strong woman who would be able to endure anything.

My ex-husband’s parents used to discipline him by tying him to a mango tree and covering his hands in fire ants. More than once, he screamed so loudly that the town priest ran over to beg for forgiveness on his behalf. Despite the merciful intervention, my ex still turned out to be a terrible person, addicted to alcohol and prostitutes and cockfighting. It isn’t Catholic to think this, but oh, I wish that priest had left him to suffer for his sins.

Whenever Monolith was ripping my couch cushions open with his teeth, throwing plastic cups across the room, or slamming himself into the bathroom door when I tried to shower, I thought of his father.

This must be my punishment for choosing a bad husband.

---

I had been a very skinny girl with embarrassingly dark skin. When I was a teenager, we had a series of poor harvest years, and my family couldn’t afford to send me to school on the jeepney. Instead, I had to walk an hour on the dirt roads beside the unending farms of kapeng barako, with only a folded newspaper to block out the sun that burned above Mount Batulao.

But Sora was different. She was smart. With their meagre savings, my parents paid for her to study in a special science school, and rented her a room in a house beside the school gates, making it easy to keep her precious skin out of the sun. Whenever I visited her in town, I felt so ashamed that I looked more like her kasambahay than her sister.

I became so ugly that my batchmates steered clear of me, like I had a disease, like my ugliness was contagious. Even my teachers pretended that I didn’t exist, always favouring the girls who could afford to whiten their skin with papaya soap. My skin was the colour of dirt, so they treated me like dirt.

When everyone else was getting ready to apply for college, I didn’t know what to do. I’d worked so hard to learn English, but I knew I didn’t belong at a fancy school. In desperation, I briefly considered becoming a nun, but even the priest seemed to turn his nose up at me. As my school days were ending, I felt more and more nervous about the kind of life I would lead.

But soon after my high school graduation, I went to a fiesta in the town plaza, and met the man who would change my life forever. He had ridden his motorbike over from another town, and he wore a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses, even after sunset. As I stood against the wall alone, he looked me up and down and said the nicest thing any man had ever said to me: You’ll do. For the rest of the night, we danced beneath the waving banderitas and the glittering lights, his arms holding me so tightly that I could smell his sweet sweat. I felt blessed.

We were married a few months later. I thought it was so romantic until it was time for the Money Dance, when I realized that he wasn’t holding me close because he was in love, but because he was too drunk to stand on his own. He tipped his dark sunglasses forward and focused his red eyes on mine. If we don’t dance, no one will pin money to our clothes, he said, his stinking beer breath in my face. Make me dance.

Normally, guests would pin the money on our clothes and dance with us separately, but this was impossible. I had to ask Sora to tell our guests that we were changing the Money Dance rules.

Just tell them that we’re so in love that we can’t let go of each other, I begged her. Tell them to pin the money to our backs and go away. Please.

And as the waltz played on, I held my new husband up until my arms ached, trying to smile the entire time as our guests gave us their pesos, quietly shaking their heads.

---

I found a little house for us to rent. It may have been the smallest home in San Marco del Mudo, but it had cheerful yellow brick walls and a heavy wrought-iron gate that made me feel safe from the world. Every night, when he came home to me, slamming the gate so hard it woke up the neighbours, I felt at peace.

He made sure that I got pregnant immediately. At first, I thought it was sweet that he wanted to be a father. I imagined him stopping his binge drinking to stay home to play with our baby. He would turn into a young papa who would be doting, loving, perfect.

But when I was seven months pregnant, he stumbled into our room at three in the morning. After you have this baby, you’re gonna get a job abroad and you’re gonna send us money, he said. "And the whole time,