In Dream Jungle, I describe the moment of encounter between Zamora, my arrogant, conquistador-like protagonist and an invented tribe I call the Himal. "How to explain that moment when Zamora Lopez de Legazpi first laid eyes on them? Zamora's gaze was steadfast and shameless. O they were beautiful, powerful, strange! Their fierce, wary eyes scrutinized him in return ..." The character feels as if he has walked into a dream—maybe even someone else's. I feel the same way.

Belayem, who was part of the original Tasaday "discovered" by Elizalde, is soft spoken and generous with me. With patience and grace, he answers the same old tired questions that he's been asked since he walked out of that rain forest 30 years ago. Dafal, not a Tasaday but the man who first brought the tribe to Elizalde's attention, is sickly, toothless and must be near 90; he is much fiercer and outspoken than the gentle Belayem. "Everything is real," Dafal insists in his thin, creaky voice. Everything is true. I took Manda Elizalde into that forest. I do not lie! Are my ghosts appeased? Hardly. But that isn't really the point. It is enough that I have ventured into the unknown, experienced my simple yet intense encounter in the market, worlds away from the chaos, distractions and noise of Manila and New York.

I return to Manila in an odd state of elation. it's time to visit the old house. Zack, Ching and I take a taxi to Old Santa Mesa. The once wide, spacious street is teeming—not one inch free of bodies, dogs, jeepneys, buses, cars, trucks, taxis. My God, there's the Caltex station. And the church—still a modest, unassuming place of worship but newly painted. "There it is!" I point excitedly, 4461 Old Santa Mesa Street. A high wall surrounds it now—you can't see in. A security guard mans the gate. "Let's go in," my friends urge me. I hesitate, scared by what we might find. Zack tells the security guard that I've come all the way from the States just to see the house where I grew up. The guard looks unimpressed but shrugs and waves us in. Our taxi driver is a wizened old man, amused and entertained by my drama. He puffs on a cigarette and keeps the engine running as I warily step out and look around. Of course, nothing is as I remember it. The original house has been torn down and replaced by some sort of Lutheran school or institution. The fragrant kalachuchi tree is the only thing I recognize, gnarled and, to my astonishment, still flowering. Maybe it isn't even the same tree. The overgrown jungle that had once been my garden has been razed and flattened. There's an ugly patch of concrete where the grass used to grow—some kind of basketball court? I'm not sure. People inside the bungalow-type buildings that are now on the property—classrooms, perhaps—glance out the windows and smile at me. I smile back, exhausted by everything, eager to get back to New York and finish my novel.

Paloma, the elder of my two daughters, one day took note of the colorful and cluttered interior of our Manhattan apartment and wisely observed, "Ma, we live in a crazy people's museum." The walls are busy, hung with my mother's paintings, my collection of Madonnas, santos and crucifixes. The shelves are cluttered with books, photos and mementos from my childhood and travels in the Philippines. Everywhere she turned, Paloma was confronted by altars for the dead, by images of family buried in a distant land called the Philippines.

In one of the many photographs I found in my mother's trunk after she died, my youthful mother smiles gaily at the camera. She holds a cigarette in one hand, looking very much the wannabe movie star in her slinky, beaded evening gown. It is a hand-tinted photograph from a more carefree time in postwar Manila; my mother looks confident and beautiful. In another photograph I cherish, my father gazes at the camera with a bemused expression. My head rests on his shoulder, and my eyes are closed. I have had too much to drink, and I am pretending to be asleep. It is my despedida party—Paloma and I are flying back to New York in the morning. She is four years old at the time and hangs on to my arm with a mischievous smirk. I look happy in the photograph. We all do. Happy, yet we are actually a little sad. My father appears fit but is slowly dying of cancer. It is 1988—the last time I will see him alive. He dies in Manila two years later. By then, I am pregnant with Esther, my other daughter, and unable to travel. I was not there, either, when my mother died, alone in a hospital in San Francisco. Nor was I there when my middle brother died, from complications brought on by a stroke, on his way to a provincial hospital on the outskirts of Manila.

During Filipino therapy, it often boils down to a language game. My expat friends and I shout out words and phrases in Tagalog, Ilocano, Visayan or whatever other regional dialect we might have grown up speaking. We curse. To speak the language with such loud abandon is a joyful exercise in remembering. We laugh at the absurdity of sitting around in some Manhattan apartment shouting "Walanghiya!" or "Kaliwa, kanan!" for no reason at all. "No shame." "Left, right." We feel no shame. The words may sound like playful nonsense to most people but are bittersweet music to our ears.

I still dream about the old house from time to time, but it is no longer a solitary house on a desolate island. I find myself—present-day Jessica—wandering inside the house and marveling that the rooms are no longer the haunted rooms of my childhood but something more mundane and ordinary. The narrow, claustrophobic kitchen in my New York apartment, or maybe the post office I'd visited earlier that day. But some ghosts will never be laid to rest, and my memory is still jogged by the most unexpected things. The perfume of rotting flowers. The taste of salt. Plaintive Cuban love songs, wistful cha-chas, silvery kundimans played on a guitar. It never fails. That ruin of a house once again looms large before me. The ghosts stir. I begin to write.

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