Self-Portrait, Partly in Manila

Luisa A. Igloria

May 12

There's a song that's an ode to it, made popular by
a '70s band with the name of a sausage brought over
in the 1800s by German immigrants to the new
world.
The wife of an older cousin on my father's side
was given that name at birth; that's why her nickname
was City. People say, if you learned to drive there,
you should be able to drive anywhere in the world.
By which they mean, in a city
where six lanes of traffic
cram into three and where it might take nearly half
a day to commute to school or your place of work,
unless you left
your house at four in the morning.
Though I was from a different city seven hours
away by bus, I took a job there for nearly two years.
This was the time I'd become a newly single mother
trying to raise three children on a single paycheck
without
the benefit of a formal divorce—which is
nonexistent in that country. In fact, it's the last country
in the world besides Vatican City where divorce is illegal.
For a while I rented
a miserable little room next to
a Seven-Eleven selling bao buns and instant ramen,
in a gated compound close to the university on Taft.
All other residents were women. It felt safe, I suppose,
until I wondered why all my comings and goings
seemed under surveillance. Perhaps
in a city with
currently 1.7 million inhabitants, privacy is practically
impossible. I didn't miss any of that when I left.
I've always loved my solitude,
trying
to hold even the tiniest silvered moth of it
in the clumsy space I form with my hands.