Boba Talk

by Andy Lopez

First published in Longleaf Review on 30 August 2020. Click the arrow (>) to learn more about this piece.

From the author:

With thanks to editor Lillian Schneider, this story was later anthologized in Best of Small Fictions 2021 by Sonder Press. I wanted to capture the fraught relationship I’ve had with English as a language. Growing up, I remember the strict rules we had at home and at school about speaking in English only. We even had a “swear jar” version for being caught speaking in Filipino. I was taught early on that proficiency in English was key to success. If you were good at it, you could wield it like a knife; I know I have. Not my proudest moment.

Looking back, I realized it was never about “learning” English either. One had to kill the Filipino accent too. You had to accommodate a very specific way of enunciation so people did a double-take, wondered if you lived abroad, and never if you went to a good school, because it was obvious with the way you spoke. Speak well enough, and maybe you could escape reality.

This is all myth, of course. The speaker in the story has this revelation when she bumps into a foreigner who sees her country as a mere vacation spot, dipping in and out without consequence. Poverty becomes chic. I wanted to use a fun play on words on “Boba” to exacerbate the vast divide language can create, in sometimes invisible, hurtful ways. More than anything, I wanted to show a sense of shared pain—both of our colonial past and future—and the pain of self-awareness, the latter of which is critical if we want to move forward.

You bump into White Boy on a parched, irreverent Wednesday morning, power-walking your way to line up for the three-hour commute at 6 AM, and too loud he announces, I am in love with your country. Falling in step with you, he adjusts the strap of his traveler’s backpack, and he’s bleeding joy, smiling the kind of smile that makes you feel like a jerk if you don’t return it, so you do. I love everything about it, he says; your people, your beaches, your Jollibee. White Boy doesn’t flinch from crowds, doesn’t fear the Houdini flicker of a snatcher’s wrist, and you wonder what that feels like. To be so at home in your own body you are unfazed by the oceans you’ve crossed to arrive here; the kind of ease where you can make a mess. Euphoric spittle flies, lands on your black polished shoes. He says, Today, I woke up early to catch the sunrise, and you think, how romantic.

White Boy is a buoyant force, a glass-half-full that runneth over. Squint, and it’s him—your detergent model messiah, encased in rosebush essence and forgiveness. Around you commuters part for him, ski-boat cutting through the waves; giddy, you realize they are parting for you, too. Wet market stench scatters like oil on water. He stops by a fruit stall, and the vendor hunkered over her calculator perks up when she sees the glint of his camera phone and poses; all your brown people are performers.

White Boy asks, You know where I can find any Boba around here? She pauses, then repeats: Boh-BAH? He nods. She titters nervously. The world’s largest fruit fly descends on your shoulder, but you are too busy battling this insidiously potent dose of embarrassment. Boh-BAH? Boba. Bow-buh? Yeah, you know—Boba. The hellish cycle doesn’t end until her eyes catch yours, and you know—this is it. You’ve watched the soaps. Bagged the medals in English Lit, all those years hammering the fight from your tongue into taffy for this one prophesied moment: to spirit a handsome tourist away from this bleary-eyed mob and lead him to Bubble Tea Valhalla, because what sensible person calls it Milk Tea? Not you. Properly, it’s Boba. Bow-buh. Notice the slight inflection? The subtle nuance, a soft pillowed puff? Boh-buh. As in the tea, not stupid girl, a name reserved for contextless clowns who tangle their sentences.

Poor fruit vendor says, Sorry, I do not know. White Boy is forgiving, yet radiant. He turns to you with a question, but this time the words are too fast. Parsing error. Nothing slots. Fruit flies conspire in your ear. He repeats his question. Whoosh. There it goes—too quick for hands. Say it slowly, you want to say. Say it slowly!

Instead, you watch him leave—farewell, easy, pliant Philippines, taking the offered bag of sweet, discounted ripe mangos, and pop! The bubble breaks: you see, now, the sun-pinked line of his pale shoulders, the drenched pits, and in seeps the congealing sewer stench, swirling around your ankles, uncoiling its many mouths.

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Andy Lopez lives and writes in the Philippines. She was a 2021 fellow from the GrubStreet Emerging Writer Fellowship and the UST National Writers Workshop. Her work has been anthologized in Best of Small Fictions 2021 and can be found in Longleaf Review, CHEAP POP, Underblong, and others. Find her everywhere at @andylopezwrites.