Transcript
Laura Lee (0:08)
My Bonnie fled over the ocean. I followed them out to the sea. My Bonnie ran fast when they saw me. Dear Bonnie. Oh, why would it be my Bonnie? Thought I wouldn't notice. My Bonnie was wrong, as you see now Bonnie lies under the ocean and I sw Listen to Spooked. Stay tuned. I've never met my grandfather and I don't know much about him. Except that after he was, it turned out that his family, his wife, my grandmother, his daughter, my mother and her eight siblings. This family was not his only family. There's another secret family with numerous children and kinfolk as well. A secret family that a surprising number of people somehow knew all about. And as a child I learned, I was taught this other family that those people were bad people. To be hated, to be feared. Because every branch of the tree touched by sin bears the taint of that sin. Illegitimate heirs to my grandfather's sterling legacy. Usurpers. And I saw them, the other kids, sometimes blinking angry eyes at me as I stared right back over at them. All of us with the same roundy heads, the same slope of the nostrils, the same gap between their front teeth as there is between mine. The same red running through our veins. And it's all well and good to hate the neighbors down the street, the people in some other country that speak another language, maybe the people that dress in different clothes, those that worship another God. But as a child, I learned that the cleanest, the brightest, the fiercest type of hate. But we saved that for family. Spookstyle. Now, now, Laura Lee, she grew up without her parents around. Said she lived at her grandmother's house in the Philippines, in a village just a few hours from Manila. But Lord Lee, she was never alone. Sp.
Grandmother (4:44)
There were more than a dozen people living in my grandma's house. My grandparents, my aunt and uncle or two, me, my brother, my sister, four of my cousins hung around at my grandma's house with us. And we were all about the same age, so it was great. We just play all day, all night. A lot of running around and screaming and yelling until it's time to have dinner. The house was two bedrooms, one bath, and then a kitchen, dining room and one really big living area. And there's a window that overlooks the front yard. It's a garden with benches. And that's where we usually hung out after school. You know, it's nice and shady out there. A lot of cats would hang out because we usually throw out scraps to feed the strays. That's also where all the pitas that's Aunt Tea in Tagalog. That's where all the pitas from the neighborhood would come over and gossip with my grandma in the afternoons when it's too hot to do anything. They were all tight. They pretty much grew up together. One day we were all hanging out in the front yard. Kids were just playing around and all the aunties were just gossiping with grandma. My grandma suddenly pops up with the last two nights I've had a really, really odd dream. I keep dreaming that onte, my uncle was standing here in the front yard and I was looking out the window and he was looking up at me and he kept saying, mom, I'm coming home soon. Don't forget to throw a really big party for me. It was odd because my grandma, she's a good Roman Catholic. When aunties would talk about weird superstitions that they had, my grandma would be the first to poo poo, that sort of thing. She said instead of feeling happy in her dream, she just felt really uneasy and she couldn't pinpoint why. The neighborhood aunties were all, well, what was weird? Did you notice anything? What was going on? And grandma says, well, number one, he was wearing a suit. Wearing a suit with a red tie. He was really dressed up. I mean, he doesn't own a suit. Also, he was surrounded by all of this luggage and it was red luggage and they all had fancy wheels on it. And he doesn't own anything that fancy. So of course all the aunties were like, oh, that's not a big deal. You know, he's coming back home in a couple of months for Christmas and he's gonna stay for three months. That's probably that you're dreaming about. You're just excited. My grandma's like, eh, I don't like it. I didn't like it at all. I didn't know my uncle all that well. The most interaction that I would have with him is when he would come back for, you know, vacations. He was my cousin's dad and that was pretty much it. All I thought was like, wow, creepy dream. That's so cool. I'm going to tell my friends about it at school tomorrow. But otherwise it was just random talk. A little less than a week after, I was in the kitchen snacking and chit chatting with my cousins and we just hear grandma yelling something bad had just happened and it's probably our fault. So we very reluctantly get up and go to the living room where my grandma was. And she's standing there, hands on her hips and she Jabs her finger and points to the ground.