Russian Roulette

Russian Roulette

One man wants to prove how strong he is,

the other how strong he is still.

The former, feet planted, legs bent,

was ready to uncoil, release, spin a roundhouse

kick to my father’s,

our father’s head,

arms taut, hands poised ready to whip,

strike, gouge, like snake or bird,

at the man who flailed his arms wildly, performing

a different dance this time in the living room,

from those we saw Saturday nights

as Lawrence Welk smiled on the television,

bubbles floating up from behind the orchestra.

I still admire the solid, muscular body of my brother.

Twenty years later,

I think of Michaelangelo’s sculpture of David,

I was honored to view once and touch

and then to remember 

my brother’s shoulder as I eased him out of the living room

for a walk to the local store

for a six-pack.

What words did I shout at my father?

The walnuts from the grove across the street,

the green husks that shattered against the trees were victims: 

I could have killed him my brother said.

We watched as he pulled his truck out of the driveway.

My father is dead

and if he felt remorse, he keeps his secret with the angels.

Some moments of tenderness are short-lived.

The mind selects what it wants to remember.

What words did I say or should have said

to comfort both men.

I believe pain is pain added to more pain.

My brother sat upright in bed,

the rifle from his closet laid across his lap.

What words of comfort might anyone listen to?

Somehow,

I coaxed him for another six-pack,

and we drove, with me driving his pick-up,

past the dark orchards,

the large farmhouses set back from the road,

Believing someday we’d drive away 

from that damn house that defined us.

This poem by Kenneth Zamora Damacion was first published in “The False Angel,” A limited edition booklet from Pegasus Bookstore, 1998.

….

Amid mounting tensions, many Pinays/oys came to deny foundational aspects of themselves to better their hopes of inclusion and prosperity. Beyond compartmentalizing appreciation and use of their languages and traditions, Filipinas/os also avoided articulation of their painful experiences in America. Well into the 20th century, elder Filipinas/os remained unsure of their status in America despite a brief episode as national wards, and decades of cross-cultural collaborations. Mabalon writes, “In his study of Filipinas/os in Salinas in the 1970s and 1980s, Edwin Almirol found that older Filipinas/os were reluctant to become politically involved because they felt that the political process was beyond their influence. As a result, their powerlessness led to even more intense malaise about the possibility of political power and change. A similar situation happened among Filipinas/os in Stockton. The special social world that they created for themselves in the 1920s that insulated them from the vicious racism in Stockton helped them to survive, but it also created a situation in which many of them acquired little political savvy or experience in attempting to influence local politics and local policy.” The more that Filipinas/os in America was policed, the more they likewise policed themselves to survive, and thus enabled white supremacy to metastasize within the Pinay/oy community. Generations of Filipinas/os would feel the repercussions of these self-imposed restrictions against Filipino culture and teachings. Children and grandchildren, like myself and my father, would be frustrated by a lack of self-awareness of blind spots in our heritage. In choosing silence as a recourse for their disillusion, Filipino elders neglected to share the history and experiences of Filipino America. Without this critical knowledge of our origins, further confusion and powerlessness have profited.

Younger generations of Pinays/oys and new cohorts of Filipina/o immigrants coming of age in America post the American Civil Rights Movement and ensuing legislation (such as the 1965 Immigration Act that removed immigration quotas against Filipinas/os), grew restless with the manong generation for their perceived impotence. This tension is articulated in Mabalon’s research, “The left-leaning and radical politics of some members of the second and third generations was a reaction to the deeply conservative atmosphere in which most of them had been raised in Stockton in the 1950s. As the historian Estella Habal argues, postwar Filipina/o American parents deemphasized language skills and traditional ethnic culture and emphasized instead assimilation and Americanization to help shield their children from the humiliation of racism.” External attacks coupled with growing internal tension would deliver a severe blow to the Filipina/o elders who had given their lives and humanity to pave the road for future generations. Mabalon describes the situation from their perspective: “Without an outlet to express their fear, indignation, and outrage at being displaced, and feeling helpless in the face of the city’s power and as a result of their place in the city’s class and racial hierarchy, Filipinas/os kept relatively quiet during the demolitions”.Without a firm and concentrated effort against the real opposition of systematized racism, Filipino America was left vulnerable to a white supremacist agenda. 

Whereas a once all-White American government had previously encouraged the promotion of white supremacy and the villainy of all other ethnic populations, post civil rights America became in many ways, much more deceptive toward the ethnic communities it targeted. Instead of explicitly racist threats against ethnic and immigrant communities, “blight” became the keyword of American Civic governance. Mabalon describes how “In January 1963, Judge Ross Carkeet ruled in favor of the Redevelopment Agency and blamed West End residents for the deterioration of the neighborhoods. ‘The single farmworker who prefers to try and find some other quarters in an area of “Skid Row” atmosphere is at liberty to do so, Carkeet said. ‘But he has no constitutional right to jeopardize the well-being, health, and welfare of the remaining population by insisting on his right to live in squalor, filth, and degradation.’” Across the nation, new programs to remove blight from a supposedly decent country were enacted. In a study of working-class Italian Americans who were similarly removed from their ethnic neighborhood in Boston’s West End, researchers noted that the residents felt extreme hopelessness, anger, and psychological distress. At the heart of blight removal projects was the same ethnic and immigrant policing that had been historically operated.

In California, where the largest concentration of Filipinas/os in America was (and remains) rooted, cultural centers and family neighborhoods were targeted as areas of blight and sites for demolition and improvement. Stockton’s Little Manila neighborhood, the home of Filipino America since the early 1900s, was demolished in favor of new highways and a McDonald’s. At first externally and then internally isolated (the latter being the result of survival tactics), established Pinays and Pinoys felt the pangs of stupefaction once again. Immobilized by a familiar mixture of fear, confusion, and humiliation, many Filipinas/os were bulldozed by local governments looking to temper civil rights and rising tides of multicultural power building in America. For these surmounting losses, the manong generation was further chastised by a new generation of Pinays/oys that demanded a return to conflict rather than peace at the cost of obedience.

Following the American Civil Rights Movement, newly implemented narratives and policies for the benefit of America’s Black and Brown communities radicalized the nature of America’s society. Overnight changes, though desperately craved, were still awkward adjustments for the historically oppressed, such as the Pinay/oy community. Contentions between generations regarding concerted efforts for the future became hostile within families and the community. Generational, cultural, and political differences (among many others) were cause for internal conflict. Posed against one another, Filipino Americans were vulnerable to further weakening from the external violence that awaited them. 

In “Russian Roulette,” Papa captures the inevitable disagreements born from discrepancies in generational wisdom between parents and children, but with the specifically Filipino American context of bitterness. Originated in my Grandfather, who had migrated to this country by 1940 at the height of Filipino backlash following waves of anti-Asian sentiment, the barriers that were placed on his humanity were still presently active during the youth and maturity of my father and his siblings. Grandpa struggled to cope as an immigrant with no preface to this country’s racism. He settled for reticence as a best practice for the hurt he was forced to endure. By compartmentalizing his pain within his own home and with his own family, it became understood that help was unavailable and suffering was to be tolerated. With such an approach he had unconsciously passed on the inhumanity and treatment he received from a corrupt society to his children. The trauma that was internalized and reinforced within the Damacion household would continually provoke its inhabitants, causing the newer generation to seek out alternative methods for restitution in violence and substance abuse.

Further crippling their futures was the stoicism of Grandpa Mamerto, who had opted to swallow his words along with his pride. His silence was insufferable for children in need of answers. In “Russian Roulette” Papa recalls a longing for the intervention that never came:

My father is dead

and if he felt remorse, he kept his secret with the angels.

Without Grandpa’s parental guidance amid such hardships, his children remained vulnerable to a hostile society and thus insecure. Several times throughout the poem Papa can be seen questioning himself, his actions, and his abilities. Caught in the explosive tension between father and children, he wonders to himself “What words did I say or should have said to comfort both men,” and again “What words of comfort might anyone listen to?” His uncertainty concerning how to handle conflict tells of the extent to which the children were starved of instruction. The repeated questioning of the essence and administration of comfort is telling of the amount of danger and pain they were susceptible to. To fight off that danger as immediately as he knew how, Papa’s brother -the eldest child- attaches himself to violence in the hope that presumed threats will retreat in fear. 

Firstly, Uncle Danny attacks Grandpa which is also a defense against the trauma, oppression, and exhaustion that Grandpa represents. Papa captures this struggle between two approaches at the opening of the poem: “One man wants to prove how strong he is, the other how strong he is still.” Like Papa, his brother is also scared of the lack of authority he has for his own life. That fear is worsened by an inability to contend with or correct the threats that are inarticulated by his father, the man he expects to lead the way. Obstructed from proper recourse those threats would continually be presented and imploded into bigger problems, as they were with Uncle Danny. Once the first round of fighting ends, the violence continues to linger well after. “I could have killed him,” Papa’s brother would later say. Sitting upright in bed “the rifle from his closet laid across his lap,” Danny is unable to let go of an anger that feels unfinished and in need of relief. His firearm reveals the weight of his unease, especially in his own home. Turbulence is an ever-present factor in this household, as Papa also returns to a search for forms of comfort several times throughout the poem. Twice he notes how within the day he coaxed his brother out of anger with a walk or a drive to the store for a six-pack. In so doing he’s also semi-acknowledging the issue at hand, but choosing to skirt it for as long as possible (like his father), letting those discomforts evolve into a loss of confidence and relationship within their family. The insinuated threat is the potential loss of family, or members of the family, as victims of an unnamed menace that permeates the household.  

As evidenced by the nature of Papa’s death and the road that led to it, there is no avoiding pain. Pain presents itself and will continue to be present as a necessary human reaction in acknowledgment of something we should be careful of. Without proper consideration, we expand the threat at hand. Alternatively, with consideration and a patient approach, new processes and opportunities arise, as was the case in the differences between my grandparents and their children, and myself and my father. Even in the most dire situations change is possible. Unfortunately, the spectrum of change is also dependent on the means available, but improvement is always present, starting with a shift in perspective.