17
On Being ‘Half ’ Girls
This little piggy went to Palengke
This little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy ate rice and fish.
This little Pinoy piggy had none.
And this little piggy went, wee-wee-wee,
All the way home to Baguio.
Baby Lim Baker: mother of five/military wife
1963, New Jersey, USA
Mommy should have known how cruel people could be. She, herself, must have hurt growing up between her cigar-smoking Filipino mother and
Chinaman father who let his wife baptize the children most of which were his Catholic. What did he care about religion? He had escaped death in China by being nailed into a crate by his Number One
Wife and shipped as cargo to the Philippines. There in the mountains, he was free.
“This is America,” Mommy would say. “You children don’t know how lucky
