Prestige

All the second-gen immigrant Berkeley moms somehow all

went to Stanford. I’m laughing because

I want to be in on the joke. When I tell the joke

to my mom, she says she’s heard it before. She doesn’t

understand the punchline. I want to be the daughter of

a mother who gives me Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin

book recs. I want to be the daughter of a mother who

carries around her NPR tote bag to the farmer’s market.

I want to be part of a lineage of women who were taught

how to think beyond dystopias. I want to own things that prove

my family is smart.

At home, my mom cries when I argue with her

about tampons. It’s not that hard, I tell her. It’s like

a syringe. When she first arrives in California,

my aunt who works at the Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission makes fun of her for this fear of her body.

When my mom first arrives from Manila, she becomes

a nurse and never uses her marketing

degree from De La Salle.

            In an alternate universe,

            I’m better at world-building.

But in this one, I am 13 when I tell my mom I don’t want

to attend the Fil-Am summer camp. She blinks, shrugs, then nods

until Dad enters the room. That July, he packs me into the car every

morning with my little sister, driving half an hour toward some Pinoy

absolution—reaching for whatever might

hold him. Later, in the family group chat, Mom texts us how proud

she is that R’Bonney Gabriel won Miss Universe and I try

not to correct her pride.

In this one, I am 16 when I bring words like kapwa and bayanihan

to the nonprofit icebreaker circle, and, for a moment, become my

#ancestorswildestdreams. They roll their eyes. I learn the word pamana

means legacy in Tagalog. An inheritance. An assurance

I can tuck in my back pocket. Proof that I am

Lapu-Lapu-choppin-off-Magellan’s-head and

Olivia-Rodrigo-slaying-it-at-the-VMAs.

            In an alternate universe,

            I’m better at world-building.

But in this one, I am 18 when my cousin wears his Stanford

sweatshirt inherited from his mom or dad or sister

to the family gathering and I know how to make my anger bite

-sized and intellectually interesting.

My dad tells me prestige in French means

deceit . I tell him it’s also the final part of a magic trick:

the things that weren’t there inevitably

reappear. This is how the world works.

In my family, we talk only about the bonuses

we’ve earned. The hard work we do—our good

sacrifice. This is what Lolo and Lola would have wished for

us: the Craftsman-style house, the tree-lined neighborhoods

in Palo Alto and the good part of Oakland.

Where the neighborhood has monthly meetings

and here, families vote no on subsidized housing.

Where the families’ kids put ACAB in their Insta bios

before changing it to harvard ’27 a week later.

Where at the kids’ school, the kids know how to ask

for what they want. They raise their hands

and answer the questions. The teacher smiles

and the kids know they are smart, so they ask

for help and know

it will be given.

Here, we become the exception and

the exceptional: The Good Student. Good

Neighbor. Immigrant removed from immigrant

-ness until it stopped being convenient. So we shapeshifted

into something other. Performed heartbreak in front of people who

don’t love us. 2 minutes to make your reader cry. 1 minute to prove

your resilience. Your mother’s resilience. Your classic

eldest-daughter-of-immigrant impression. Together, we watch the

SFFA v. Harvard  MSNBC report on YouTube and search for an

Asian American who looks like they came from her bad-good jungle

country. We are squinting at the game. We are trying to find our

place. We are the contorted face of civil rights fighting for

civil rights. The highest court in the land is finally fighting for us.

            Look how far we’ve come.

            Look how far we can go.

When I go to Pomona’s Bay Area Summer

Welcome Party where everyone else’s parents dropped

60k a year so their kid could attend

Harker or Castilleja, I feel lucky

that an institution, 400 miles away,

is choosing to invest in me.

When I hear the humming

of my white uncle’s white

Tesla with the Feel the Bern

bumper sticker slapped on, I feel lucky

I have this family half an hour from

my family. When we all sit at their dinner

table, my aunt says she feels lucky

her son will be so close to home

and my mom, under her breath, mutters, legacy,

but we all keep eating

because nothing should go to waste.

Instead, the word scurries

like a roach under the table. My mom

is unfazed. An ipis in the

Philippines would eat

that ipis for breakfast.

            In an alternate universe,

            I’m better at world-building.

Here, we condense the distance between our worlds

until they are touchable and alive.

Here, everyone knows how to love each other

without falling apart.

On a scrap of paper, my mom

scribbles ipis: a one-word poem,

a spell. An attempt at becoming the hand

but not the object it holds.

We make it a guessing game,

charades. We take turns morphing into the wingèd

beasts but nobody can get it right.

            So the word falls

            back into the bowl

            and multiplies.

Again and again, we describe ourselves

without describing ourselves.

Give it a name

without ruining the fun

of the game.

    In the end, we’ll all lose.

Not because we’ve broken the rules, but because we’re bad

actors, shitty magicians. We like to stay humble that way.

            And I know

            we are losing.

                        But I have stopped paying

                                                                attention.

                                    Instead, I am watching my

                                                    mom

                                                    watch

                                                  our family.

                                    I am watching her mouth

                                    the word

                                    like the promise

                                    of a so-good-it’s-bad

                                    joke.

                                    The turn

                                    of a magic trick

                                    when something ordinary

                                    becomes something

                                    extraordinary.

                                    The moment

                                    just before you realize

                                    you’ve become the thing

                                    you were trying to prove

                                    you could become.