Sophia Romero — Calling In: Sophia Romero

In 1995, I was pregnant with my second child. when a visiting relative told me that in the northern region of the Philippines, where my father’s side of the family is from, there is a tradition of burying the placenta or the afterbirth with tokens of good wishes for the child.

I was hearing this for the first time. Now, my mother, who comes from a different part of the country, did not bury hers. Because if she had, I never would have heard the end of it. You see that hibiscus bush over there? That’s where I buried my placenta.

I have to admit, the idea was both intriguing and fascinating to me because you know when you’re in your third trimester of pregnancy, you just want it to be over. And yet here, I was being asked to think about tokens, predetermining the life of this child before it could even live outside of me and on its own. Why not? I loved it. And my husband, who is a nice Jewish boy from Queens, and whose mother I know did not bury her placenta, agreed. He said, let’s do it.

And our midwife was equally excited, but she said, you have to take it home right away because The hospital doesn’t hold on to them. So on the day of her birth, she was prepared. As soon as the afterbirth was delivered, she carefully transferred it into a plastic takeout container that can hold a double order of hot and sour soup.

She gave it to Dan and told him, go home now. and stick it in the freezer, which he did. He took the F train from the West Village to Brooklyn because it was faster than taking the cab. He stuck it all the way to the back with the words, do not eat, written on masking tape.

And there it stayed for the next three years. We fully intended to bury it once we got enough sleep. But, you know, days turned into weeks, turned into months. We didn’t. I couldn’t because it turned out that it was not as simple or as easy a decision to make.

How do you bury a placenta? Do you stick it in a shoebox with ribbon and then bury it and commemorate it with a headstone or a flag so that you always know it is there? I happen to live next to Prospect Park and those city squirrels are vicious and they like to poke around anything and everything and I was afraid that I would walk into my backyard and find a family of squirrels enjoying a picnic over something that used to be mine. Or worse, chasing that rogue squirrel with leftovers between its jaws and me screaming give it back, drop it.

As an immigrant, my relationship to the land of my birth is very different from the land I have acquired by choice and now live in. I knew that once that placenta went into the ground, I would be staking a claim to a land that I was just getting to know and understand. Was this home? Or was this where I received my mail?

I left the Philippines in 1986, leaving everything behind to start over. I came to New York, started a new career, I met and married my husband, we started a family, and I became an American citizen.

Overnight, I was turned into a hyphenated individual, a Filipino-American, a demographic that looked good on paper but didn’t exactly describe who I used to be and who I was becoming. My mind was filled with my native language, Filipino. but the words and ideas that tumbled out of me were oddly unfamiliar.

In trying hard to blend in and to assimilate, I turned against myself, fighting an enemy from within. How does one live in two worlds yet belong to neither? And there, in the back of my freezer, was this silent witness to my internal struggle.

I was afraid each time my mother came over to babysit or make dinner because she might cook it by mistake or worse, throw it out by accident. My children, Eli and Amalia, were now seven and three years old. But the longer this Placenta remained unburied. The farther apart my two narratives remained.

But here’s what happens when you procrastinate. The universe steps up and makes that decision for you. So one Saturday morning, I woke up, went down to my kitchen, and found a puddle of water by the foot of my refrigerator. I opened the freezer door, the bulb was also out, confirming what I was afraid of. My refrigerator had died. The ice cream looked like yogurt. The frozen meat was no longer frozen, and there in the back, I could see the takeout container, the black ink, running down the sides.

And I thought, what the whatever? I didn’t wait three years just to throw this thing out. I had to save it at all costs. But I was also curious. Because I had never seen it before. I mean, there were so many things going on. And so… I took it out and decided to take a look, not knowing what I would find.

I opened it, and to my surprise, there was this beautiful round dome floating in melted ice. It was this bright red. It sparkled like a ruby. I smelled it. I jiggled it, and it jiggled back. I immediately covered it and ran to my next door neighbor and asked her to please hold on to this plastic container until Dan and I could figure out a plan. She’s an immigrant too, so she didn’t ask any questions.

In the meantime, it just so happened that we were actually had plans to go away to the North Fork in Eastern Long Island where Dan’s family has a summer home. And then it occurred to me, well, I could bury it there, we packed up the kids, we packed up the refrigerator with everything we could save. I got the plastic container from my neighbor and packed it in its own cooler with whatever ice I could save. We drove up, the cooler was in the back, the kids fell asleep immediately and Dan was focused on not getting a speeding ticket. And all I could think of was this passenger sitting by itself all the way in the back. Would it make the two and a half hour trip? Did I put enough ice?

And then I started to think of tokens because nobody ever told me what those tokens were. And then it occurred to me, in the Philippines, when someone moves into their first home, their first dwelling, before the furniture comes in, before the curtains are hung, they bring in rice, sugar, and salt.

So we get to the house. Dan takes care of unpacking the car. I take care of bringing the kids in, settling them inside. And the next time I look up, there is Dan in the front yard walking with a shovel over his shoulders.

And then I thought, okay, I grabbed the kids, put my three year old over my shoulder because she was still asleep and grabbed a few things from the pantry. When we got to Dan, he had already started digging a hole. And he stopped what he was doing with a big smile on his face and said, this is a good spot. And my seven-year-old Eli said, a good spot for what? And I said, a good spot for burying mommy’s placenta. And my seven-year-old said, what’s that? And I said, baby food. By the time Dan was done, he had dug a hole so deep, nothing would ever get in.

Very carefully, he opened the cooler and took out the container and solemnly poured out its contents. Blood. matter and water spilling into the soil and turning it into a brown mush. And then from his pocket, he took out tokens that I didn’t even know he had. He threw in a sheet of music for a musical life, a compass for a mathematical acuity, a copy of Wired Magazine because this was the 90s.

And a pair of dice so that the children would always be lucky. I threw in a cup of sugar for a sweet life, rice so the children would never go hungry, and salt so they would be forever rooted to the land.

And then we planted a butterfly bush in honor of the land where I was born and in honor of the land where I now live. And so that I could also truthfully say, you see that butterfly bush over there? This is where I belong. Thank you.