Silly Little White Girl

I never realized I didn’t look like my cousins. I always just assumed everyone knew we were related because, well, I did. It never occurred to me my features weren’t as prominently Filipino as theirs were. The first time my nationality was questioned was when I was 7. It was the first time I had ever been to the Philippines, and the second I stepped off the plane, I was escorted with my father to a car with dark tinted windows and a bodyguard standing outside with a gun slung over his shoulder. The air was so sticky it was almost suffocating, but the second I sat in the car, the air conditioning broke the moisture and I felt more comfortable. I still can’t explain it to this day, but the Philippines have this distinct smell that I’ve never forgotten. It must be a mixture of the humidity and some kind of tropical smell, but whatever it is it’s stuck in my senses. After we were picked up, we drove in traffic for about an hour or so and that’s when I had my first experience talking to a native Filipino boy my age.
My window was down because I was getting cold in the air-conditioned car. I was looking at the McDonalds across the street and realized it looked different than the ones at home. Then, this boy who had obviously been in the sun way too much that day rode up on a bicycle carrying popcorn necklaces. He asked me in broken English if I wanted to buy one for a peso. I took a quarter I had in my pocket and went to hand it to him, but as I did, the bodyguard in the front seat screamed, “Hey!” and reached into the back, snatched my penny, and screamed something in Tagalog at the young boy. He screamed back angrily, glanced at me, and rode away. The bodyguard glared at me, since I had obviously done something wrong, and called me a silly little white girl. My dad leaned over and told me not to listen to him; he was just nervous because he got scared that I had put myself in a dangerous situation. The bodyguard was there to keep us safe. I didn’t understand and sat there feeling insecure the rest of the day until we came to the compound our friends owned in Davao. Why did he call me a white girl in that tone? Didn’t he know my mom was Filipina? Why was buying a popcorn necklace dangerous? And why did our friends live in a compound with huge concrete walls around it and bodyguards with guns at every entrance?