Ramon Bustamante Returns Home

Ramon Bustamente stood by the wide bay window of his small condominium in Koreatown, Los Angeles, staring absently at the rustling fronds of a worn-out palm tree swaying against the golden smog of a late California afternoon. From this angle, the city always looked like a dream fraying at the edges—too loud, too fast, and far too young for a man like him.

It was Naomi’s story that wouldn’t let go of him. Not the modern one—some Hollywood Naomi with a heartbreak and a bottle of rosé—but the old Naomi, the one from scripture. The widow. The mother who had buried both her sons in foreign soil. She had no pension, no security net, no one left to hold her hand. She went back to Judea, because at least there, there was familiarity. A memory of home.

Ramon wasn’t much different.

There was a time, not long ago, when his sister Marietta and her two husbands—first the brutish one, later the gentler Matt—along with his friend Jim, had formed a makeshift circle of support. A motley crew of urban survivors, bound not by blood but by the gentle glances and silent assurances that aging didn’t have to mean solitude. Ramon, older than all of them by a good decade, often joked he was their spiritual dry run for old age. They would tease him, cook for him, sit on porches and share unimportant stories that felt important in the moment.

But fate, he thought bitterly, always trims the cast.

Marietta was now in hospice, her bright laughter reduced to vague memories and hospital whispers. Matt, whose health had always been shaky, was barely holding on. Jim was still around—but barely more than a ghost of companionship. He was kind, loyal, and perpetually broke, dependent on Ramon for housing, utilities, and the illusion of stability. Ramon knew that if it came down to it, Jim’s heart would be willing—but his hands would be empty.

So now, the path was starting to clear. Like Naomi, Ramon needed to go home.

Back to the Philippines. Back to the tropical rains and cousins who still remembered his voice. It had been thirty-four years. The thought was dizzying—like walking back into a room you left as a young man only to find your own ghost still sitting in the chair. But the logic was sound. Back home, he could live out his years in peace, with faces that looked like his, in a language that didn’t trip on his tongue. He could finally be surrounded by people who might not know all his stories, but at least shared his beginning.

Still, there were logistics.

He couldn’t abandon Jim just like that. Doing so would haunt him for the rest of his life. Jim would need stable housing. And then there were the properties—bits of California he had managed to hold onto, now waiting to be sold, their proceeds earmarked for a modest retreat somewhere near the desert borders: maybe Barstow, maybe Bullhead City. A place close to an airport, so he could come and go. He wasn’t closing the book on America—just dog-earing the page.

But his thoughts kept circling back to his sister Marietta, his only family in California.

He had imagined her final moments. Not in sterile detail, but in light. She would be drifting, perhaps, toward something radiant. A laughing breeze. A house with no corners. Maybe their parents were waiting for her, or their older brother, cracking jokes at heaven’s gate. Ramon tried to picture her not as she was—frail, exhausted, swollen with pain—but as she could now be: dancing, laughing, unburdened.

The grief, he reminded himself, belonged to the living. The dead were free.

And there were still things left to do for the living. Marietta, in her final years, had left him something: a modest IRA account. Her silent gesture. She couldn’t help much while she was alive—not for lack of love, but because life hadn’t given her much to give. Now Ramon would pass it on, quietly and with dignity, to the family she had so longed to support. His prayer was that she would be remembered, not for the years of silence or pain, but for this last, quiet kindness.

Perhaps, he thought, he could use a bit of that to pay off his own medical bills. Nothing outrageous—just $3,700. A strange kind of blessing, really. As though she were helping him, finally, in her own time.

His mind wandered again, not to the estate plans or real estate listings, but to their shared past. Marietta’s life in Los Angeles had not been kind. She arrived like an exotic bird clipped of its wings, her dreams of marriage and work and love smashed against the gritty realities of immigrant life. Skilled in nursing but naïve in love, she had married a man from the low end of humanity’s spectrum—a man who caged her spirit and narrowed her world to four walls and a ball of yarn.

For ten years she crocheted in silence.

It was only after they pushed the man out of her life that she began to heal. Her second love—her rescuer, later her husband—helped her walk again, literally and figuratively. They taught her to drive. She started laughing again. She talked about walking in the park. She even joined a gym.

Then came the sickness.

First the blood sugar spikes. Then the ketoacidosis. Toes were amputated. The cancer came next—silent, then screaming. Ramon remembered it all in excruciating detail. The elastic bandages, the breathless calls, the hospital beds, the silences that said more than any diagnosis ever could. Her voice had once filled their phone conversations with the gossip of siblings and tales of old neighbors. But in those final months, it shrank, like a house closing its windows one by one.

They had both been sick. They both knew it. And still, neither dared to say the worst aloud.

Now, with her journey nearly complete, Ramon stood alone in his apartment, surrounded by the hum of the refrigerator and the faint noise of a car alarm in the distance. He whispered a prayer not for himself, but for her. That she find her way into the light, quickly, painlessly. That she float, finally free.

He thought of her as a pioneer in a strange land, now heading home, like Naomi, like him.

The world would forget them in time. All of them. That was the natural order. But in the time left to him, Ramon Bustamente would make sure her memory lingered—softly, like the smell of cassava cake in a childhood kitchen, or the echo of a hymn sung far away.
2025-06-20 02:11:51
shortstories

Migratory Bird

(written early 2000s)
You are probably not interested in his story, the story of Miguel. It is not one filled with laughter, philosophy, or life-altering lessons. It is written in poor English, broken like his heart. And you know what a broken heart is—it weeps with blood. Blood that floods the brain, making it go crazy. Sad, dirty blood. And Miguel washes it away with wine. Wine cleanses his mind, scrubs it empty. Reality, memories, dreams—gone, at least for a while.

Sometimes it is difficult to understand his English, but don't worry. You'll get it. It won't hurt you if you keep hearing him repeat himself. You understand? His English is gathered from the groves where he picks oranges, from the women who sell their bodies, from the men who sell their souls, from bars that pour cerveza negra, and from Taco Bell. It is tangled with prayers to the Lord Jesus Christ and punctuated with the echoes of home. "Hola, my life is fine, Teresita," he says into a prepaid calling card, standing inside a phone booth by the side of the road.

Dressed like a farmer ready to cultivate an entire continent, he holds the receiver against his ear, unmindful of the cars rushing past, their drivers either oblivious to his existence or fully aware of his non-existence. Ay caramba.

He once arrived in this country well-dressed, with good manners and great confidence. But now, reduced to second-hand clothes from Salvation Army, he wonders—who here in the USA cares to see him dressed as handsomely as he once was? Who even cares to see him at all? Standing by the roadside, his eyes plead with passing drivers. "Have you a job for me?"

And the jobs he takes—less than minimum wage—lifting, pushing, shoveling, cultivating, digging, planting, cementing, cleaning, washing. What is left? Every kind of labor except the one he trained for.

Back home, he was an accountant. But what is an accountant's worth in a place where numbers do not add up to survival?

You see, in his home country, you can have many decent things—education, love, romance, respect, dignity, honor, history, friendships—but without money, they all crumble into dust. Here, he has no home, no family, no full grasp of the language. But that does not matter. What matters is that he has muscles, silence, servitude. He will not flinch if poked, spat at, cursed, treated like dirt. Because at the end of the day, for real, at the end, he earns dinero. Yeah, dolares, for real. Money—that’s what counts. Everything else can wait. It doesn’t matter how he is treated in Gringo-land. Who cares, as long as he can feed himself and send something back home?

Miguel places the receiver back on the hook. He turns his gaze to the long, winding road, so clean, so well-kept. Thanks to workers like him, America remains beautiful.

Every day, cada día, he learns more about the Gringo system. He notices that hard work is rewarded here. There is no such thing as a low-class job as long as you pay taxes (but he is still illegal) and commit no public scandal or crime (so far). In Gringo-land, you can live your life, mind your business, and no one will bother you—so long as you follow the rules. And so, he will be here—weeks, months, years, even forever—until he becomes one of them. A Gringo who pays taxes. A Gringo who is treated as an equal.

This plastic calling card in his pocket—someday, it will transform into an American Express card. Or Visa. Or Mastercard. How does he get there from here?

Miguel sits by the roadside, plotting his future. He can marry a Gringa. He might be lucky and receive amnesty from some politician looking for votes. He could enroll in an American school, become a nurse like the Filipinos. He could start a landscaping business and apply for a business visa. So many possibilities, yet all seem just out of reach.

Today, he cannot even find someone to hire him. Is this what life is meant to be? Born in a poor country, drawn to a land of promise, only to scrape by, endlessly scheming for a way to belong?

He is a migratory bird, flying toward abundance, hoping it will last long enough for him to blend in, to become a native. But how long will it take to acquire the plumage of the local birds, to fly like them, live like them, build a nest like them?

The other migratory birds have scattered. They once flew together, but now they part ways, each seeking a branch to call their own. There is no more flock, only solitary wanderers, drifting in limbo, chasing a dream that is both near and impossibly far.

And he has chosen Gringo-land. But where does he begin?
2025-03-14 02:51:53
shortstories