CHAPTER ONE:
I AM OTHER
It began with a photograph. One I’d never seen before, taken of my grandparents in Liverpool before they immigrated to the United States. A cousin discovered it among his belongings and mailed the picture to my parents, who framed and displayed it in the living room. My grandfather, Juan “Ropo” Trogani, looked stiff in a double-breasted black suit with a white handkerchief tucked inside the top pocket. His thick black hair had been brushed into a full mop on his head and he stared at the camera with an air of grim defiance. My grandmother, Dorothy “Dolly” Lowe Trogani, sat primly next to him on a high-backed chair, her straw-colored hair swept up off her plain, pale face. Dressed in a long, drab wool skirt and a matching jacket with faded trim, she wore no jewelry, save for a small gold wedding band.
I wondered what circumstances could have brought them together—two people from vastly different worlds, she so fair, he so dark and serious. Could they have loved each other? Strangely enough, I hadn’t realized until recently that three of my grandmother’s sisters also married Filipinos. What was so special about these foreigners that made them more desirable than their English counterparts, driving four sisters, all from Liverpool, to marry men of a different race and immigrate to the United States?
I cocked my head and glanced at the photograph of my grandparents again. The contrast between their complexions was striking: Dolly’s pallor was a sickly shade of white next to Ropo’s tanned flesh, baked bronze by the Pacific sun. It reminded me of a story I’d heard when I was a little girl.
It was the summer of 1975, the quiet time of day just before bed the first time I heard it. The stifling heat and humidity of late July in Irvington, New Jersey sapped us of our usual urge to play on the sticky, asphalt surface of our backyard. I sought refuge along with my ten siblings in the only place in our house with a portable, window-sized air conditioner—the living room. Earlier, Dad stuffed strips of spongy, yellow foam on either side of the window and draped a faded bed sheet across the doorway to trap the cool air. He and Mom dragged down twin mattresses from the upstairs bedrooms, placing them end-to-end across the wooden floor. As I entered the room, a frigid blast swept over my face as the others shoved me forward, sweeping the impromptu curtain back into place. Now we lay two to a mattress, our bony bodies clad only in cotton underpants and threadbare t-shirts, crossing this way and that like a game of human dominoes.
Lying atop my pillow damp with sweat, I listened as the others chattered idly about the fact that Sonny and Cher were scheduled to appear on the Johnny Carson show that evening. Several of them were taking bets on which song they’d perform, although why anyone would wager on anything other than the obvious choice of “I Got You Babe” was beyond me. The hum of the air conditioner drowned out the dwindling roar of the Garden State Parkway, which ran past the bottom of our home’s intersection of 677 Grove Street and Eighteenth Avenue. A boxy, two-story structure with a sea foam green stucco exterior, our family occupied both floors of the right-hand side of the building, while the apartments to the left were rented out to tenants, including various relatives at different times.
I waited for someone to switch on the television—an older model with a greenish-gray screen bulging forth from a wooden console—when Dad appeared. Immediately, all conversation ceased. Dad filled the doorway, arms akimbo, surveying his large brood. Coarse black hair covered his head and protruding brow. Though only five feet tall, he towered above us. Years of physical labor working outdoors as a carpenter had turned his skin dark and leathery and formed broad muscles in his shoulders and chest, oddly offset by a small potbelly. He was shirtless, dressed only in a pair of cut-off denim shorts, which exposed sturdy thighs and the bulging calf muscles that gave his lower legs the shape of drumsticks.
Stepping over our bodies, he made his way toward Mom. She sat across the room on our handmade couch that consisted of a wooden frame topped with a long rectangular foam cushion. Dad lowered himself beside her, tucking his feet under his crossed legs and proceeded to fill his pipe with fresh tobacco. Mom reached down and pulled me onto her lap. Although I’d turned nine that April, I was unusually small for my age and she easily lifted me off the mattress. As she did, my hand brushed against Dad’s bare heel. The skin felt hard and rough, the result of many barefoot years. I yanked back my fingers as if they’d just grazed a sizzling pan. I wondered if he could even feel my touch against his callused flesh and burrowed closer to Mom’s ever-pregnant belly, which presently contained my youngest brother. Mom glanced down at me, a waist-length mop of wiry chestnut hair framing her tanned, freckled face. Eight years younger than Dad, Mom showered us with affection and often seemed more like an older sibling than a parent. Lucky for us, she knew how to diffuse Dad’s anger and often intervened if things were headed in a dangerous direction. Her smooth brow furrowed as she took in my anxious expression.
“Martin,” she said, “why don’t you tell them the cookie story?”
The suggestion came as a shock. Dad rarely spoke to us kids, and when he did it was usually to bark out monosyllabic orders.
Dad inhaled, then bit down hard on the end of his pipe. Finally he exhaled. Whiskey-flavored tobacco smoke filled the air and he stared at the ceiling, as if deciding how best to start.
“In the beginning,” he said, “God made the earth. He built the mountains and the oceans. He filled it with animals and plants, and it was beautiful.” Pausing, he peered around the room to ensure that the dozen of us were listening, and we were, in rapt silence.
“God looked around at everything He had created and said, ‘Something’s missing.’ So He made a little man, like a gingerbread man, and He put it in the oven. But He’d never done this before, so God left it in there too long and it burnt. And these were your black people.”
I let out a small gasp, but Dad just frowned in my direction and continued: “God said, ‘This won’t do.’ So He made another man and put that one in the oven and baked it. But this time, He took it out too soon, and that was your white race. And God said, ‘It’s still not right.’ So then He made a third man and put that in one the oven and it came out nice and golden brown. God said, ‘It’s perfect!’ And those…were the Filipinos.”
As Dad uttered these words, the most unusual thing happened—the muscles in his face relaxed, easing the lines above his brow and slackening his jaw. From where I sat, it almost appeared as if he was smiling.
Back then, my family hoarded secrets like squirrels gathering nuts for winter. Some secrets were run-of-the-mill, like how mortifying low the funds were in Mom and Dad’s joint bank account, driving them once a month behind their locked bedroom door to pore over our family’s frequently dire financials. Others were silly, like our secret family recipe for Asian-style barbequed spareribs that we were warned not to share with outsiders under penalty of death, and which I later learned was clipped from the New Jersey Star-Ledger’s food section. A few were mythical in proportion, possibly untrue, more rumor than anything else…like whether our Uncle Stan was really the illegitimate child of our Aunt Tillie, but raised by our grandmother as her own son to save face.
We had a whole boatload of secrets, but never it seemed more than our fair share given the size of our expansive family tree. I had fourteen members in my immediate branch—seven girls, five boys, plus Mom and Dad, both of whom came from large families as well. Dad had eight siblings, Mom five, which totaled to thirteen aunts and uncles plus their spouses. Add to that over fifty various cousins and percentage-wise our track record for secrets didn’t seem half bad.
Still, we kids were usually left in the dark about anything important. I was the ninth born, a birth position that relegated me to being one of the “little kids” and shoved me even further down the food chain of information. So naturally I had no idea about the secret Dad was hiding—a horrible, haunting past that he kept locked tightly inside.
We’d overheard snippets here and there: how his family moved from New Jersey to the Philippines when he was a boy, how he’d been taken prisoner by the Japanese; but those conversations ceased when we entered the room, voices dropped to a hushed whisper. Top-secret meetings were even held between Dad and his siblings to discuss important family matters, excluding not only our underage ears, but Mom and the other in-laws as well. Blood, after all, was sacred. Not even a legal marriage extended certain privileges to those not born directly into the Trogani clan.
Over the years, Dad tried to educate us about our ancestry. He described the Philippine flag with its colorful red and blue stripes, flanked by a white triangle with three yellow stars in each corner and a golden sun in the center. At dinnertime he tried to teach us his native language, Tagalog.
“Isa, dalawa, tatlo, apat, lima, anim, pito, walo, siyam, sampu,” I struggled, counting between bites. I never made it above ten and only retained a few simple words like mabuhay (hello) and salamat po (thank you).
Dad was only half-Filipino; his mother was English, born in Liverpool. Mom was half-Filipino and half-Irish—both of my grandfathers were full-blooded Filipinos—and our heritage was evident in our looks. Most of my family had prominent Filipino features: dark almond-shaped eyes, broad flat nose, tawny complexion and thick, wavy black hair. Only two of the twelve children favored their British forebears in appearance with blond hair and blue eyes. And then there was me—the mutt. My hair was thick and wavy, but it ranged anywhere from pale blond to coppery red to pubic-like black frizz. I inherited the flat-as-a-pancake nose and almond-shaped eyes, but my yellowish-pink pallor and bright blue irises drew many raised eyebrows. The one advantage of my hybrid appearance was that people often mistook me for Caucasian. Although I knew it would infuriate Dad if I ever denied my Filipino heritage, I constantly fought the temptation to do just that.
As a fourth-grader in St. Leo’s parochial school, I took the usual government-sponsored standardized tests. Number-two pencil in hand, I began filling out the test form and was making good headway until I came to the section labeled Race. There were four circles: White, Black, Hispanic and Other. I had no doubt which blank I should fill, but still I hesitated.
Our teacher, Sister Virginia, suddenly loomed over me, peering down at the unanswered question. She tapped the desk with a ruler. “You’re white,” she said. “Fill in White.”
I knew the repercussions of correcting a teacher, especially a nun. But then I imagined Dad holding a printout of my test scores and seeing the word white next to my name. The image overwhelmed me. “No, Sister,” I answered meekly, “I’m Other.”
Sister Virginia looked me up and down, frowning. Embarrassed, I glanced over at my best friends: Stephanie Wiggins and Josephine Torrisi. Stephanie Wiggins represented everything I wished to be. Thin blond hair, soft as a baby’s, feathered around her oval face with its slightly upturned nose and smattering of light brown freckles. My other friend, Josephine, wasn’t nearly as fair. A short, sturdy Italian girl, she had thick black hair cut in a bob and an olive-skinned face with a slightly hooked nose. Jo was loud and funny and we all adored her. Although she didn’t have Stephanie’s WASP looks, I would have traded places with her in a heartbeat, too. After all, this was New Jersey during the 1970s. All the cool people were Italian—Frank Sinatra, Frankie Vallie, Sylvester Stallone, Robert DeNiro. I’d gladly have traded Italian for Filipino.
People often mistook me for an Italian. Like most Italian families in our neighborhood, our surname, Trogani, ended in the letter i. When people casually made this assumption, I didn’t correct them. But this was different. This was an official government document that could end up in Dad’s possession. I decided to set the record straight. “Actually, Sister, I’m Filipino.”
Lids narrowed, Sister Virginia leaned over the desk to inspect my face. All the eyes in the schoolroom were on me. I held my breath, praying that God would make my appendix burst or set the building on fire, anything to end my misery. At last Sister Virginia stood up and stammered, “Fine, you’re—you’re...Other.” With that, she shuffled away, long black skirt rustling. The blood rushed to my cheeks as my fellow classmates snickered. I didn’t dare look at any of them, not even Stephanie or Jo.
We were one of the few Filipino families at St. Leo’s. When I told classmates that my nationality was Filipino, they stared blankly at me, as if I had said I was from the planet Mars. Fortunately, we Troganis found a way to take advantage of our racial obscurity. On frigid winter mornings when we couldn’t afford heating oil, which meant no hot water for washing or showering, Dad would call the school and say it was a Filipino national holiday and the children would be staying home. Once he mockingly told my eldest sister, Anna, that our great-great-great grandfather threw the spear that killed the explorer Magellan when he discovered the Philippine Islands. She took him at his word and proudly repeated this information to her class, and it was accepted as fact. Another time my older brother, Martin, hung an old striped beach towel from a flagpole in our yard. When a passerby inquired about it, he fibbed and said it was the Filipino national flag and the man believed him. It seemed that people knew so little about the Philippines, we could make up anything and label it a Filipino tradition. If that didn’t work, we pilfered traditions from other cultures. Our massive extended family celebrated birthdays and anniversaries with elaborate luaus, complete with pigs roasting over an open fire. When I questioned whether luaus were actually part of our culture—weren’t they Hawaiian?—my uncles rolled their eyes at me and explained, “These are Filipino luaus.” Put the word Filipino in front of anything and we somehow owned it.
Not until I reached adulthood did I feel the need to learn about my family’s secretive past. In February of 1997, I gave birth to my first child, a daughter we named Megan. When the nurse lifted her up, I was stunned to see that my newborn had thick black hair, golden skin and curved brown eyes. My husband, Andy—who is German and English and about as Caucasian as they come—looked as surprised as I was. When Mom and Dad arrived at the hospital, I took them to the nursery to see my baby.
“Which one is she?” Mom asked.
“That one there,” I said, pointing proudly toward the acrylic bassinette that held my sleeping child.
“What, that chinky-china baby?” Dad said brusquely.
I knew that “chinky-china man” was one of the racial slurs that Dad and other family members had endured growing up in a mixed-race family. I gaped at my father, wondering how he could be so insensitive.
Later, when the hospital brought us the paperwork to apply for Megan’s social security card, I froze when I came to the section labeled “Race/Ethnic Description.” I felt as though I’d been transported back to my fourth grade classroom, images of Sister Virginia flashing before me like a bad dream. Fortunately, times had changed and there now was a box specifically designated for “Asian, Asian-American, or Pacific Islander.” Megan was only one-quarter Filipino, so my husband suggested we register her as “White.” Still, I faltered. We could check the “White” box, but that wouldn’t stop people from glancing at her sideways or asking, “…what exactly are you?” I looked at my newborn and realized that she too was “Other” but for different reasons. My husband’s surname, Snow, might lend credibility to a racial claim of “White,” but I knew that Megan’s ethnic appearance would negate whatever we put into print. I wondered how or if I’d be able to protect my daughter from the inevitable questions and comments about her race. How could I shield her from ignorant strangers when I couldn’t even stop my own Dad from calling her a chinky-china baby?
As I stroked Megan’s thick black hair it suddenly hit me that at the age of thirty, I knew almost nothing about my family. Not that anyone could blame me. What with our long-standing tradition of keeping our family’s business hush-hush, I was lucky to know anything at all. I decided then and there that my child would not grow up surrounded by secrets and myths as I had. There’d be no whispering behind closed doors in our house. Megan wouldn’t be forced to create faux traditions or holidays. My daughter would know the truth. There was only one problem—I didn’t know it myself. No one did.
Over the next few years, I delved into Dad’s family history: interviewing relatives who were still living, sorting through stacks of faded photographs, poring over research, and traveling to faraway countries. I retraced my family’s steps over three generations and three continents to discover the tragic truth about their lives in England, the United States and the Philippines. I even worked up the courage to ask Dad what happened to him all those years ago, in the jungles of the Philippines.
