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Mrs.
Aquino honors us beyond words by her presence. Mr. Vice
President, Mayor Binay, Senator Angara, family, friends.
v When my mother was a child, she was her father’s
favorite. So much so that when he went on long
voyages—he was a ship’s engineer—he entrusted all the
household expenses to her. Once she used up all the food
money on watermelons. For weeks the family went around
bloated, except my mother, who thrived quite happily on
cotton candy.
When I
was a boy, I showed her my grades. She was having her
hair done for a party. She glanced at them. “I see you
have been working hard. Good grades come from hard
work.” Then, holding my face, she added, “But good looks
come only from God. You have your father’s ears.” I
slept with a band around my head to flatten my ears and
prayed to get her nose.
She was
frequently on the cover of Philippines Free Press even
before my father owned it. She was his prized
possession. He eventually tired of his great library but
never of her. Despite his difficulties with her, he
never cheated on her. The stern Calvinist Scotsman who
founded the paper doted on her and passed on the paper
to my father.
He
fought Meralco over power rates but Don Eugenio Lopez
and his wife Nitang doted on her. Within earshot of my
father, Don Eugenio announced, after a shopping spree in
Hong Kong to which she had been invited, “Next time the
pyramids.” But there would be no next time. Martial law.
Magsaysay was a frequent guest at her parties, along
with the Americans my father had worked with to save the
Republic. They vied with each other to dance the fox
trot with her. She had small feet and beautiful ankles.
She had
great artists and poets, like Jose Garcia Villa and Nick
Joaquin, eating out of her hand, not for the favors she
could give but for the spell she cast. Nick wrote a poem
about her command to write her one. I forget if it was
Villa or Nick who finally wrote the poem. It was in the
manner of François Villon.
They
must be among her things or lost because she did not
care for mementos. To history’s loss, she liked cutting
up old photos to make silhouettes of the figures,
throwing away the background and any clue to the
occasion. Anyway, history was what she had enjoyed; it
was not for anyone else to share and get it wrong.
She
reigned in the counterculture club of Indios Bravos and
never forgot who catered to her whims over there. When
told that she could have her wish from the new
government of Cory Aquino, she told me, “Aquel Chino que
me servia gimlet, sigue en la carcel. Release him.” Joma
Sison hugged her on his release.
Important events in the paper’s life were sometimes
celebrated in the Palace; never mind that my father was
critical of the administration. It was not that she
asked but that it was insisted on. If the party was in
the house, the male guests wore suits but stood in their
socks. She hated dirt.
She
enjoyed company, be it of the great or the small; the
only qualification was their ability to entertain
themselves. She loved seeing people laugh.
She
dismissed passionate political talk as a form of mental
instability. If you shouted while telling a joke, she
loved it; but if you shouted to press home a moral
point, she would turn to the person beside you and say,
as though you were deaf, “Esta loco.”
A swami
from Hare Krishna crawled like a snake on the floor of
her living room. “Well, at least he is also wiping the
floor,” she said, as though he were deaf. Then she fed
him ham sandwiches in violation of his dietary code. He
wolfed them down.
She
could cook really well but only when the mood seized
her. This was usually when we were not around—I guess to
annoy us.
Did she
love my father like he loved her? Did she love him for
the prominence he had achieved by hard work? But hard
work kept him away and she had soldiers drag him home
from the office one day.
She
liked priests but mostly for their courtliness. They
were welcome in the house even after they had eloped
with their penitents. She remarked only on the
homeliness of their spouses.
The old
generation may remember how willful she was toward my
father. Only his favorite sisters knew that he had
brought it on himself.
When he
complained, they said, “But you spoil her; you made her
that way. God help you when time takes away her looks.”
In fact,
Time would take away everything: my father when he was
arrested, her social eminence when the old Republic was
destroyed. She might have kept it still. Marcos offered
to let Free Press go on attacking the government so long
as he and Imelda were spared. My father said no. My
mother did not protest. Yet, she had warned my father of
disaster if he went on attacking the President—not
hysterically but with quiet authority like she was in
the know. She never told my father, “I told you so.”
After my
father’s release, she closed the door on the world,
maybe before the world closed door on her. It didn’t
matter. She had my father all to herself, irritating him
still from time to time. She hardly ever left the house
though she still had her looks; enjoying visitors when
there were any, indifferent if no one came.
Her
constant companions were Henry Caballero, a set designer
at the Hilton, and Susing Sotelo, a cousin, and both
gay. She kept few other friends, not from being
standoffish but from an unwillingness to spread her
affections thin. So she had Mrs. Magsaysay at the other
end of town and Rose Marie Prieto in her neck of the
woods and, from time to time, Chita Diaz halfway
between.
Even
after Edsa, and past the death of my father, to the day
she slipped into a kind of coma where it was all pain
and only flickering awareness, her life did not change.
She
still did not go out much; she kept the same company;
followed the same routine.
It was
early to bed but late to sleep, with the TV always on
the Fox News Channel, always a rosary in her hand; and
late to rise, water the plants while the dogs played
around her, and laugh when any of us showed up. That was
humbling.
She was
not prayerful, as we understand the word, nor at all
pious. For a reason none could divine, the two most
religious people in the family doted on her: Tita Carnay,
a lay sister, and Mother Luisa of the Assumption. At any
rate, her private devotions were always that, private.
Perhaps she thought that communing with the Almighty was
as intimate a function of the spirit as the other things
were of the body: inconvenient but necessary, and too
small a bother to make a public fuss over.
That was
my mother. From the way I tell it you would think she
had not raised us, but she must have because we’re here
and we kept coming to her house, like it was a magnet,
even after we had families of our own.
She
proved my father’s sisters wrong. She never lost all her
good looks. When she lost some of it, like her slim
figure, she took it in stride. She got her figure back
anyway when she became bedridden. On the point of death,
she also got back the smile she had while holding fast
to my father in the woods of New Hampshire.
She gave
that smile to my brother just before dying.
Thank
you so much for sharing this time with us. |
