Fury of a Woman
Shoot! My eggs are burning! I know the smell!
It happened while I was chatting away on Messenger with classmates from high school. The foul smell of something like sulfur suddenly filled the air in my apartment that morning. I sat bolt upright in a panic. The eggs! I was boiling eggs and forgot all about them. I ran to the kitchen to find the stainless steel pot boiling dry, the eggs charred and stuck to the bottom.
Dejavu. The same happened back in my old apartment. While entertaining friends in the living room, someone commented about a peculiar smell coming from the kitchen one evening. It must be my Chinese neighbor cooking something exotic again, I presumed. Funny, but exotic should not stink, another friend said. What he said startled me, and I realized that I was boiling eggs, and the water must have dried up. Poor Chinese neighbor getting blamed for my bout of dementia.
Valentino (not his real name) was to blame this time. Or I was partly to blame. I created a Messenger chat group called Klasmeyts ’65, hoping to reconnect with members of my high school class of 1965. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen many of them since we sang Auld Lang Syne on graduation day over half a century ago. My, my, my! It seems like it was only yesterday when we were sweet sixteen, and ‘the taste of life was sweet as rain upon our tongue.’ It is sad to hear that many of our classmates are no longer with us, gone forever. We miss them.
Valentino was a classmate in HS who joined our Chat Group only recently. Like many of my classmates, I found his whereabouts on Facebook. I sent him a message, but have yet to receive a reply. It turned out to be an old account he had since stopped using. So, no one in our Chat Group knows where Valentino was. I am glad there are social media like FB, although I do not expect everyone from my HS batch to be subscribers. Valentino, a quiet, reserved boy in high school, was known for his love of music and gentle nature. He was the kind of person who always lent a helping hand, and his absence from our lives was deeply felt.
Now I have a friend who lives in the same village where I know Valentino. She said she knew someone with the same family name and might know Valentino. This someone happens to be Valentino’s daughter. And that was how we found him. He told Klasmeyts ’65 that his wife died a couple of years ago, but failed to mention, or didn’t want to say, that he has a live-in partner, Dusa. Dusa, a strong-willed and independent woman, was not someone to be trifled with. Valentino was inebriated one day when Dusa hacked into his Facebook and Messenger accounts and read about the chat exchange between him and Alindog, another classmate. A nightmare ensued! Dusa didn’t like seeing the heart or ‘take care‘ emojis at the end of every message. I don’t think Alindog left kiss emojis; I remember her as one girl who was so particular about her unblemished reputation. She was sugar and spice, and everything nice–the image she projected so hard in high school. The Good Girl! She married later and may even have been immaculately conceived had it not happened three times.
Dusa wrote a message in our chatroom, breaking the news that she is Valentino’s wife, a revelation that confused us. Wife? Didn’t Valentino say he is a widower? In a follow-up message, Dusa wrote in Tagalog that whether she’s a wife or a girlfriend doesn’t matter. They have been together for over a year now, she said. Thus, asawa na rin (can be considered as a wife). Oh, never mind! One is quick to say kabit, but kabit is a demeaning word you apply to a woman or man cohabiting with a person married to someone else. But Valentino is a widower; his partner is a widow, so you cannot say they are magkabit. A live-in partner in Tagalog is kinakasama, which is an accurate description. Still, when you say it in Tagalog, you come up with the same meaning. So what’s in a name? Ask Shakespeare.
In her message, Dusa singled out Alindog and expressed her dislike for her. The notes reached me at midnight, Vienna time. They made no sense. They were from Valentino, yet it was evident he did not write them. It was late, so I went to sleep only to wake up the next day to find our chatroom clogged with a chain of messages from classmates consoling Alindog, who felt slighted and scandalized by the insinuation that she was out to snap Valentino away from Dusa. “Pa love, love pa sya!” Dusa wrote. That’s a Taglish phrase I don’t know how to say in proper English. “Pa love, love pa sya!” Oh, forget it. She was furious with what she thought was Alindog’s scheme with Valentino.
“Don’t mess up with me” was how I interpreted Alindog’s reply to the unfounded accusation. In her message to Dusa but addressed to our Group, she swore (my bitchy interpretation) that she would never in her life imagine having an affair with Valentino. I gasped and felt sorry for Valentino. Such stinging remarks, I thought, but which I applaud. It was short of saying, “Excuse me! Valentino may be the last man standing, but no woman in her right mind, but you, will take him. Bitch!”
In another message, Alindog asked me to rescue her and comment on the issue. She knows she can count on me at any time.
We were best friends in high school—Alindog and I—and have retained and nurtured the friendship through college. Still, it was disrupted when she married a colleague from my work whom she met through me. I was not particularly fond of him and did not hide it from Alindog. So I felt like a jilted boyfriend when she married him. I attended her wedding, but that was the day I lost her. We drifted apart until I left the country. We have not heard from each other for as long as I can remember. But thanks to Facebook, we found each other again. She, a widow; I, a confirmed bachelor. No! No! No! to what you are thinking, so please, take that look off your face!
I didn’t want Alindog to dwell on the issue. I’d like her to be able to laugh about it. Take it with a grain of salt, I said. Valentino finally gathered the courage to send his thoughts to our chatroom. He apologized for the bad behavior of the person he described as his “hadlang sa buhay” (the hindrance to my life). I replied in jest that he should start evaluating his “hadlang sa buhay” and concentrate on Alindog instead. I punctuated the message with a laugh-out-loud emoji to avoid being misunderstood. I am serious, like when I mentioned to Valentino that many of our female classmates are now widows. One of those may have been the recipient of numerous love notes he wrote in High School. He was only a teenager then, but was already keen on having a girl he could call his own, so he composed letters. I should know because he would ask me to write for him; he thought my handwriting was impressive. Weird, though, that I don’t remember any of his unrequited “puppy” loves. And not one girl from Klasmeyts ’69 claimed to be one. Come on, girls, give the poor boy some credit—for his effort, at least.
“Take it as a compliment, girl!” I wanted to tell Alindog. Calm down. She felt so scandalized and demeaned by Dusa’s written accusation; we, her classmates, could even read it. “The nerve!” she said.
“When around them, you can make people, women especially, lose confidence in themselves. You make them insecure,” I have told her many times. “Even nuns get intimidated by you.”
I remember one particular incident that happened in the school hallway. I was with my classmates Alindog, Catalina, Conchita, Joseph, and Mauro in the hallway. Joseph told us a joke that made us laugh hysterically when a nun appeared before us. Her face was stern, and she demanded the girls to kneel, heads down; we boys were spared. I saw tears rolling down Alindog’s cheeks.
There was this rumor in the classroom that this nun was Joseph’s lover, which Joseph neither admitted nor denied. So we surmised that the nun probably knew Joseph was attracted to Alindog. But, again, Hell hath no fury like a nun, err, a woman scorned!
Fast forward. Dusa found me on Facebook. She wrote a message telling me how sorry she was for what she had done—stirring a situation. She said Valentino made her feel unwanted and believed he was embarrassed to admit they were a pair. It was not easy living with Valentino, so she considered leaving him several times, but felt sorry for him each time. It was compassion that made her stay with him.
“Do not equate pity with love.” That was Father Bob Garon in me talking. (Does anyone from Klasmeyts ’69 remember him? He was a Manila-based Canadian priest (or American? I cannot recall now). He ran a drug rehabilitation program in the ’70s. If I remember correctly, he also had a newspaper column where he wrote inspiring messages, like guidance and counseling. Unfortunately, I know he left his ministry and got married. What has become of him after leaving the Philippines? I wonder.
“Tell Valentino how you feel. Then, discuss your problem with him, and don’t go to bed without resolving the issue.” I may sound sincere with my advice, but it gives me the goosies when I play Father Bob.
I saw Dusa’s profile photo on FB and found her attractive, standing 5 feet 7 inches tall. “You are beautiful, and Valentino should be lucky that you accepted him, despite everything,” I said, soothingly. But, at 61, she may sound too young for Valentino, who is pushing 75. He may have retained his charming ways when he was younger, but he is not the best catch, like many of us now.
“You don’t make sense,” I told Dusa. “Seconds ago, you said you pitied him, and seconds later, you professed you genuinely love him? Make up your mind! Either you drop him or keep him.”
“Remember, you are an attractive woman; you can still find true happiness.” That was Father Bob in me again–boosting her morale, helping her believe in herself, and helping her recover her shattered confidence.
“And I am telling you, you can still make eggs burn and water boil dry!”