Profiterole: A [Fictional] Story about the Role of Profit in Colonization
Author’s note: My dad died last year. He died the day after my 30th birthday. This was a story I wrote about him half a decade ago in a writing class taught by Reza Aslan (great class, beyond amazing and engaging instructor, highly recommend). The assignment was to weave a story around an interview with an immigrant (or a family member or a family member who is an immigrant — I forgot). It has seen multiple edits since. I didn’t interview my dad. I wove this story from fragments of multiple conversations I had with him throughout my whole life up until that point. Memory and perception are faulty. Thus, I only feel comfortable calling this fiction, and it mostly is anyway. I wanted my dad to read this while he was in the hospital, but he passed before I got a chance to email it to him.
This story is for my father. Dad, thank you for the pearls of wisdom. Thank you for filling my belly with delicious food, my ears with exquisite music, and my heart with unfathomable joy. Thank you for showing me the true meaning of resilience, strength, wisdom, and compassion. You apologized to me for this in 2012 and again on your deathbed, but there are no need for apologies — thank you for preparing me for war. (And thank you to Ocean Vuong for writing something I so desperately needed to read.) In today’s political climate, your lessons on colonial mentality have been essential. Rest in power, Dad.
I dedicate this story to America’s White Working Poor. You are not forgotten. My father was going to vote for Trump because he understood a world of scarcity like many of you do. Our politics did not divide us, but we did disagree. I want to pass on some words of wisdom my father shared with me: there is no shame in being poor. I know you may resist this truth, but people like my father and me — immigrants — have more in common with you than people like Trump ever will.
Among America’s White Working Poor, I want to especially thank Brooke Snicket, one of the most beautiful and toughest women I’ve ever had the honor of knowing. Thank you for your activism and involvement in Redneck Revolt. I want to also thank Kyle Legros — may this world never dim your light, and may others always show you the kindness you unfailingly and indiscriminately show to all. You both inspire me. I stand with all of you in solidarity.
His youngest brother’s coughing is what roused Ephraim from his sleep. Only 12 short years on this earth, and he was already burdened with more than some people would bear in 12 lifetimes. Thankfully, the coughing subsided as quickly as it began. Ephraim’s concern was swiftly eclipsed by gnawing hunger.
This isn’t a particularly bad way to wake up, he tried to console himself. At least I’m not dying. He was striving to remain optimistic — the seemingly sempiternal song of the downtrodden denizens of the developing world, of the post-colonial populace — but he immediately regretted it. An ominous feeling crept over him, accompanied by his memories of last night. He thought about his youngest brother, 5-year-old Dan, who was seven years his junior.
Ephraim walked into the living room where Dan lay. He looked uncomfortable under his heavy, hot blanket, his brow dewy with perspiration, but he was still fast asleep. His coughing had been uncontrollable the night before, but he was only wheezing now. In an adjacent room he shared with four brothers, Ephraim had lied awake on his mat on the floor silently, privately weeping, closely listening to Dan’s relentless, tormented hacking. He imagined each cough as an invisible thief, slowly robbing his brother of air, of life.
Dan had lost all feeling and movement in his left foot three days ago. Every day since, his mother, father, his four sisters, and six brothers would pray for the limb to regain strength and movement. This is what you do when you have no money, no resources, nor means to acquire either to save someone you love. You weep and you pray. And you hope.
The ancient Greeks perfectly expressed what every individual born into poverty, every person at the end of his rope implicitly understands — that Hope is the last monstrosity to crawl out of Pandora’s box. It’s far from the panacea that people with means believe it to be. Hope tortures and torments. Maybe all of Pandora’s monsters were fleeing from Hope. Dickinson was wrong; Hope isn’t a thing with feathers — not for everyone, at least. Hope will have you bleed out when you should be cauterizing your wound and cutting your losses.
Ephraim did not know this then, but this would be the reason behind his constant need for control as an adult. He’d be driven to earn money, propelled by his desire to cure a brother who would have, at that point, long been cured.
Yesterday was particularly trying because Dan’s leg began to turn a shade of purple. Days earlier, it turned a deep, dark red, before settling into the purplish-gray it was today. Necrosis, thought Ephraim. My brother’s limb is dying while he’s still alive. He choked back his feeling of insignificance, his lack of power. He imagined the vast ocean and what it looked like from space, what the world looked like from space. How microscopic the earth must appear relative to the infinite universe! It felt useless and hopeless. Insignificant. He felt useless and hopeless and insignificant.
Ephraim began to prepare for school. He hated school. He hated that his mother’s insufferably affluent sister paid his tuition. He hated his snooty cousins and his classmates. He and his brothers were famous. Or infamous, rather. His eldest brother, Reuben, was a teen-aged Lothario, notorious for successfully seducing new hires, as long as they were young and pretty. Ephraim wasn’t particularly interested in girls yet. He was known for extorting the wealthy students. All he’d have to do was stand idle, jangling spare change in his hand, and the other students knew that they had better make a contribution, especially after he sent one of their schoolmates to the hospital. The guy had been taller and bigger, but Ephraim was smart, fast and fierce, hardened by the same Manila streets that would forge Manny Pacquiao decades later.
Ephraim wished he had money for lunch or that he could pack a lunch, but his family did not have money. The little food they did have, he wanted his younger siblings to eat. Had Ephraim known anything else other than poverty and insistent hunger, he might have been sad. Instead, this was normal.
On his way to school, he passed the tree stump that had been fashioned into a chess set by his elderly neighbor. The old man had whittled the chess pieces by hand, and it was on this set that a 5-year-old Ephraim learned to play. Ephraim recalled learning the movements of the chess pieces. He passed a lot of time playing with that old man. Chess helped him forget his hunger momentarily. He thought of Dan and wondered if he’d live long enough to learn how to play chess. Ephraim had to stifle a sob.
He arrived at school, and the day proved uneventful. The sun felt hotter than usual, and school seemed to drag on longer than it had yesterday. By the time his class was dismissed, Ephraim was dizzy with hunger, but hunger and its accompanying lightheadedness were his constant companions.
The palengke was halfway between his home and his school, and having to trek past all the food was pure torture. While most of the stalls were comprised of makeshift tables and canopies, there was a brick-and-mortar bakery that Ephraim loved walking past. He loved cream puffs, and this bakery made the best-looking cream puffs he had ever seen in his life. Later in life, he could never turn down an opportunity to purchase profiteroles whenever the opportunity presented itself. As an adult, he searched for a cream puff superior to the ones from this bakery, but even up until the day he died, they remained unmatched.
As he approached the bakery, he slowed his pace. His eyes were glued to the pastries displayed behind the pristine storefront window. The cream nestled within the puffed pastry looked so delicate, the silky ganache glistening atop each golden orb. They looked especially delicious today, or maybe he was especially hungry. Two sentimos is all one cost, but he didn’t have a sentimo to spare. Well, he did have one sentimo in his pocket, but he had planned to give it to his parents to help purchase Dan’s medicine.
A sentimo is nothing to most people, he thought bitterly. Even if I did have another sentimo, I wouldn’t spend it on a lousy cream puff. His stomach growled in protest, which made him realize he had been lost in thought, standing motionless the entire time with his nose nearly touching the glass. He caught sight of the baker eyeing him suspiciously, and Ephraim wondered if his hunger was written all over his face.
Embarrassed, Ephraim turned to hurry home when two young boys dashed past him, nearly knocking him down.
“Sorry!” They cried out in unison.
“Mga kupal,” Ephraim muttered angrily under his breath.
Close behind the boys followed a middle-aged man, smartly dressed in clean, crisp linen pants. He walked briskly past Ephraim, paying him no attention. The man’s smug self-importance seemed etched into the architecture of his pale, but unmistakably Filipino face. Ephraim’s own face was quite pale, but unlike the man’s face, it was not unmistakably Filipino. The man had a broad nose, broad like Ephraim’s mother’s nose. Ephraim’s nose was matangos, pointed and sharp — the Filipino ideal — like the white American GIs who had helped liberate their country from the Japanese a decade earlier. Later, when his family was about to immigrate to America, his mother’s sister would try to convince his mother to depart without Ephraim, saying that she would be mistaken for his nanny because of his matangos na ilong, honey brown hair, and pale skin.
The boys haphazardly pushed the bakery door wide open and it remained ajar. He heard the man speak.
“Pick out whatever you like, boys, but make it quick. Mommy is waiting for us.”
The boys pressed their doughy, greasy faces and fingers against the glass. They looked like greedy little piglets, eagerly awaiting to have their trough filled.
They ordered two dozen cream puffs. Ephraim looked on, delirious with hunger and envy as the baker filled the pastry box to the brim. When the baker handed the man his change, the man didn’t even bother to count it. Ephraim wondered if, one day, he’d ever be so prosperous that he wouldn’t bother counting his change.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” The man bellowed, ushering his little piglet sons out of the store.
As the group departed, Ephraim looked on, ashamed and disgusted. He wasn’t sure what he felt ashamed about nor could he pinpoint exactly what disgusted him. He felt defeated and suddenly so exhausted.
He struggled to peel his eyes from the pastry display once more, and he implored his feet and legs to re-start. As he was turning once again towards home, he saw something glimmering on the ground near the door of the bakery. It took a moment for his eyes to focus, but once they did, his heart jumped to his throat. The man had dropped a sentimo! As surreptitiously and as swiftly as possible, fearful that the man would return and demand his errant coin, Ephraim bent down to pick it up. The man must have dropped it! He now had enough money to purchase one petite cream puff!
But I shouldn’t, he thought to himself. My parents need this money. Dan needs medicine.
Before he could be tempted any further, Ephraim surmised the willpower to start slogging home again. There was a stubborn resolve in his step that hadn’t been there before.
Yes, Ephraim thought. They need this money. This money needs to be saved. But…but really two sentimos is chump change. Does it really make a difference?
His incessant hunger, which only mildly nagged at him since that morning, was roaring now.
There probably won’t be dinner tonight, which means Dan probably won’t get anything to eat, either.
I know, reasoned Ephraim, I’ll buy Dan a cream puff. He has probably had near nothing to eat all day as well. Two sentimos doesn’t make too much of a difference, but a morsel of food, regardless of how minuscule, will really lift his spirits. He fought the fear that it may be the last treat Dan might have a chance to enjoy. So, with his good intentions, Ephraim headed back to the bakery to purchase one cream puff for his brother.
The transaction between the baker and Ephraim was awkward and abrupt. The baker always spotted Ephraim as he made his way past the bakery to and from school. He was hard to miss. The baker noticed how he often lingered at the storefront. It annoyed the baker. Ephraim was hypnotized by the pastries — and the baker certainly couldn’t blame him. The baker was convinced that he made the best baked goods in Manila. Nevertheless, Ephraim’s presence made the baker’s customers very uncomfortable. Walking past the scrawny youth with the old, well-worn, albeit clean clothes made them feel uneasy.
The baker was shocked to see Ephraim enter the store and was about to throw him out when Ephraim thrust out his open palm, offered his two sentimos and requested one cream puff in exchange for his money.
“Just one?”
“Just one,” Ephraim replied, suddenly self-conscious.
The baker tenderly bagged a lonely cream puff in a white paper bag, and briefly considered tossing in another one for free. The boy certainly looks like he needs it, he considered, but he decided against it. He wanted customers, not entitled beggars.
He handed the white paper bag to Ephraim, who dashed out of the store and jogged towards the end of the palengke. As the crowd thinned, he opened up his bag and marveled at the perfect, elegant puff. He held the bag open under his his nose and inhaled deeply, thinking about how happy Dan would be. This will lift his spirits, and it may help him get better, he thought. With his optimism resurrected, he carefully folded the bag shut and set out towards home again, feeling proud.
Ephraim had made his way past his family’s gate and was standing in front of his home when he decided to open the bag to peek at the cream puff once more. That was his first mistake. The moment he laid his eyes on the pastry, he began to salivate. The crust of the pastry had been baked to a perfect amber hue, the chocolate as silky as he remembered seeing it countless times through the bakery shop window. He imagined the soft, airy interior of the cream puff beneath its beguiling and deceptively crisp, golden exterior. The subtle aroma of vanilla wafted from the generous dollop of sweet cream nestled between the halved orb. It beckoned to him like a siren’s seductive song. He reached into the bag.
Ephraim tried to justify his actions to himself. His mind was racing. I’m just going to hold it. I’m home. There’s no danger in savoring the smell a little while longer, he rationalized. He held the cream puff to his nose and inhaled deeply.
He thought about his daily treks past the bakery, about all the time he spent admiring the baker’s baked goods. I’m going to take a little taste. Just a little. Dan won’t be upset. He’ll be so thrilled to be getting something, he won’t care that I decided to take a little taste.
Ephraim was holding the pastry between his teeth, getting ready to savor a modest bite when suddenly, he was assaulted by the sound of his brother’s coughing. He was only a few feet away from the front door so he could hear Dan’s tormented hacking. Tears filled Ephraim’s eyes as he angrily, mindlessly shoved the entire cream puff into his mouth. He began to chew viciously, furiously, forgetting that the cream puff was intended for Dan.
Ephraim was angry at everyone and no one. He swallowed the cream puff in one violent gulp, forgetting to relish the treat he had coveted for so long. He was voracious — how could he not be? A growing boy who fasted more than he feasted? But because his stomach had shrunk considerably due to a lack of food, he was somewhat satiated — physically, for now, at least.
It was only when he tasted his salty tears did he realize what he had done. He felt his anger and hunger wane and make way for emptiness. It was an emptiness so overwhelmingly hollow and lonely that it physically pained him to bear it. Great, heaving sobs escaped his mouth. He doubled over as if someone had kicked him in the stomach. It sounded like his lungs were trying to escape his body, and he began to mourn. He mourned for the childhood he never had and the childhood his brother would never have. Most of all, he mourned over the throbbing, relentless, inescapable hunger that would inevitably return in a few, short hours.
