Four Funerals and a Wedding: The Third Funeral (Part III)

My mother had reason to be angry with my father. In all sense of the word, my father had betrayed my mother. He fled China and abandoned his betrothed and their daughter Lima to find a better life for himself in Manila. He slipped to British territory Hong Kong and proceeded to fly to Manila. She was smitten as he persistently and fervently wooed her. He married her in church and integrated her into his family. All seemed fine except that No amount of persistence and assurances from Uncle Tiong kim that he prefers her as his sister-in-law can assuage my mom. It had been going on for sometime, he had been going home to two families. Before I was born, he and his Chinese wife already had a daughter, Argentina or Gina (she, thankfully, didn't use the surname Tan) after she arrived from China at the height of the Miss Universe brouhaha. My mom later on revealed that my dad wanted to name me Argentina, after the Argentinean ambassador to the Philippines who was with him on the same flight to Manila from Hong Kong. Thankfully, my mother refused and I was named "Mary Rose", being born in October, the month of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Shortly, after I was born, my father's first and only male child, Henson or Son-son, was born. It was shortly after my sister was born when my father finally left the house and lived with the other family. He had two more children afterwards, Sabu and Angelina or Baby.

Not for anything else, my dad's Chinese wife had a few loose screws. First, though quite understandably she hated us as she probably blames us why her husband never returned for them, she would, according to my Tita Rosa and cousins, throw a fit whenever she hears the name 'Linda". Naturally, she taught all her children to hate us too. My sister hates them but I don't and I couldn't explain why. Second, she maltreats her youngest child, Baby and treats her differently from the others. By some stroke of luck, my former teacher in grade school who now teaches at this public school near our place became Baby's teacher. One day, she called on her mother to report to her an incident in school. Baby's mother, in disowning her child's misdeed told the teacher that Baby wasn't really her child and was in fact the child of someone who lives in a place which, by her description, exactly fits our house. The teacher, realizing that what was being referred to was my mother, told her that she is friends with the occupants of the described house. Upon hearing that, my dad's Chinese wife simply turned her back and left.

As I was growing up, and she getting older, I sensed that my encounters would her were not as threatening to me as before. Probably because I knew I could already take on her (as in sabunutan) if she dare say anything bad about me, my sister or my mom. No such confrontation has ever happened. Truth is, somehow, through the passing of time, their acrimony towards us had ebbed, the same way that ours did too. When Uncle Tiong kim died, it was another occasion to meet (but not greet) each other. Again, my dad and uncle still had an existing feud when my uncle died and it was only then did papa reconciled with Kuya Henry, first born and new patriarch of the family. Incidentally, unlike my father's poor taste in picking names, my uncle had sense to name all his children after royalty or Greek gods: Elizabeth or Beth, Athena or Annie, Enrico or Henry, Katherine or Katyn and Richard. Ate Beth, Ate Annie and Kuya Richard are now all living in Florida.

Uncle Tiong kim would have been proud had he known I became a lawyer. In fact, I was already a lawyer before he died but I was never allowed to visit him when he was already sick. I simply dismissed it as something Chinese-the refusal to let others see you so sick and weak when you used to be respected and looked up to. When we were young, we gifted Papa a portrait of him when he was still young and with mama. He didn't seem so pleased when he received it and he explained to me that in Chinese, only those who are very old or successful are entitled to have portraits. Looking back, I realized my father didn't have much sense of humor and took himself too seriously. If he only knew how my being portraitphiliac, he would have realized how very un-Chinese I am.