nonfiction

Gilda Cordero Fernando, Cantadora
by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo

I first read Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker by Gilda Cordero Fernando when I was a sophomore in college. And from that moment, I knew who it was that I wanted to write like. Her characters were different from the ones I had encountered in the stories of other Filipino writers in English. They were people I could identify with-sensitive little girls like Wendy in "Hunger" and the girl being mercilessly bullied by Socorro in "The Eye of the Needle," or bewildered adolescents like Tia Dolor's niece in "Hothouse" and Victoria in "People in the War," or lonely expatriate students like Noli and the heroine of "Sunburn". And her plots sometime skipped blithely out of the real world into the magical one of goblins living under a hillock in the shadow of a fire tree in a "wild neglected spot of the garden, planted once long ago and forgotten," and ancient gypsies living in "a little village tucked in the apron of a mountain" weaving silk the color of "the translucent amber of centuries-old Amontillado, the ephemeral glitter of green on the wingtips of dragonflies, the elusive wisp of smoke in the crater of a dying volcano."

There was a picture of the author on the back cover, and I remember thinking, "Oh Lord, she's pretty too!"

A year or so later, when I was writing for the youth page for the Manila Chronicle , my boss, Amante Paredes, sent me a review copy of A Wilderness of Sweets , Mrs. Fernando's second book. I read it in one sitting, and wrote my review of it that same night. I thought it was an even better collection that her first book. "People in the War," seemed to me now an early study for the title story in the second book, "A Wilderness of Sweets"-a harrowing tale of a young girl's experience of war, evoked with deceptive lyricism. "The Dust Monster" a wilder, more whimsical, more enchanting version of "The Level of Each Day's Need". And "Early inn our World" a more painful story than anything in the earlier volume.

Some years later, I received, to my great delight, a complimentary copy of Culinary Culture of the Philippines , with a little note from its author, saying that it was not for reviewing, but for me to enjoy.

In these days of glossy coffee table books and regular book launchings, it is difficult for young people to imagine what an event Culinary Culture was when it first came out. To begin with, National Bookstore had only two small branches, and they only carried textbooks. Alemar's, Bookmark and PECO sold textbooks and foreign books. Popular, Erewhon and La Solidaridad had "Filipiniana" sections, which consisted of a shelf at the back of the room, containing a handful of novels and short story collections, anthologies used as textbooks, and history books. With the exception of Nick Joaquin's The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Kerima Polotan Tuvera's The Hand of the Enemy (which were Stonehill grant recipients), and Carmen Guerrero Nakpil's Woman Enough , all were paperbacks, printed on cheap paper. Bert Florentino had come out with "peso book" editions of the classics. And when National decided to come out with compilations of Nick Joaquin's magazine essays, it packaged them as cheap pocketbooks with komiks -type covers and movie-magazine titles.

The appearance in 1976 of the handsome Culinary Culture , priced at 140 pesos, was little short of a miracle. Evan more miraculous was the fact that it was a hit.

Ah, I thought, she's a wonder worker too.

I finally met Gilda Cordero Fernando at the launching of the first two Joaquin essay books at the new National on Harrison Plaza. There was a big turnout, because, according to Chato Garcellano, " Akala ng mga tao, ikakasal daw si Nick at si Nora Aunor ." I don't remember who introduced me to Mrs. Fernando. And in that crowd, it was impossible to say anything beyond "how nice to meet you at last".

We ran into each other intermittently after that-at other book launchings, at openings of art exhibits, at a plant fair in the U.P. campus. But she did not become my friend until later. By then, I had reread her stories many times, had given them to my daughters to read, had taught them to my students. My personal favorites were still "A Wilderness of Sweets" and "The Dust Monster," but I had come to appreciate the subtlety and sophistication of all the other stories-the ones set in middle-class suburbia as well as those set in Pugad Lawin and the village of broken-down "bus houses".

In her autobiography, Simone de Beauvoir recalls that she had always imagined Han Suyin as Jennifer Jones, the actress who had played the heroine of Love is a Many Splendored Thing . When she actually met the Chinese-Belgian writer, de Beauvoir was astonished to find that she was more beautiful than the actress. In my mind, Gilda Cordero-Fernando was the heroines of her stories. And then I got to know her, and to my astonishment, she was more fascinating than all of them combined..

The assignment to do her profile for another magazine a couple of years ago (it never saw print, as the magazine folded up in the way of such magazines), convinced me that I still hardly knew her. I dialed her number, frantic for an "interview". I needed to collect the data that usually went into that sort of story.

Gilda was amused, but she obliged, as usual. We set a date. She remembered that she had tickets for Anton Juan's Salome at the CCP, and invited me to come with her.

"We can have lunch first," she said. "I'll pick you up. I know a place you'll love." As usual, she made it sound like an adventure.

While I waited for her, I tried to recall how she looked. It wasn't that simple, because she's the sort of person who looks different each time one sees her. At Nestor Mata's recital, for instance, she wore a long rose-colored skirt and a blouse she had made herself from an old camisa appliquéd with flowers from another terno , and her long hair was held with a clasp and draped over one shoulder. When she came to speak to my undergraduate class at the U.P., she was wearing a denim shirtwaist, a choker she hSad fashioned from chandelier crystals and antique beads, and frizzy hair.

For our lunch that day, she was dressed in black slacks and a black t-shirt.

I tried to find the word that would best describe her special quality. Again, it was nothing as simple as beauty. Beauty, certainly, but also radiance, vibrance, grace, laughter, tears, passion.

The place she took me to was Cosa Nostra, a tiny establishment on Adriatico Street. Very cozy and very chic. Though I have never been particularly partial to Italian cuisine, I found the pizza pezzo and the spaghetti with its vegetable sauce irresistible.

It was difficult to concentrate on facts like dates and degrees and number of siblings. We kept getting sidetracked. Gilda's interests are multifarious. Between bites of the incredible pizza, we talked about dream analysis, about manghuhula , about aerobics, about women's secrets, about women running away, about mutual friends-Julie Lluch, Sylvia Mayuga, Doreen Fernandez.

She gave me glimpses into her childhood in Quiapo. The street was called Escaldo. It was a tiny street, but the procession of the Nazareno never failed to pass that way, because her neighbors, the Nakpils, were the biggest contributors to the Quiapo church. During the Occupation and part of Liberation, she lived in Malabon. And after that, the family moved to Malate-Ermita, "the burgis part of town". There she spent her growing-up years. "And then, I couldn't stand it anymore, so I got married and moved away," she says.

Her relationship with her mother was a troubled one, she explained. But with her father, a professor of Medicine at the U.P., it was ideal. "He was always there for my sister, Tess (Pardo), and me."

I recalled her saying to me one time that she could not imagine writing her autobiography. "It I so difficult for a Filipina, isn't it?" she said. "You can't let it all hang out. People will get hurt." But, in fact, she had written a very touching autobiographical piece called "Motherhood Statements" (included in the anthology Telling Lives ) about the connections between mothers and daughters. And she and Mariel Francisco have since published a book which is a kind of "joint autobiography".

This project-like all Gilda's projects-was, above all, original. Two women writing about different phases and passages of their individual lives, which are also phases and passages of other women's lives.

We got back on track somehow. What about her schooldays at St. Theresa's College? I asked.

"Oh, I was not a good student at all," she said. "I was never in the honor roll. So the nuns never made me editor-in-chief of the school paper until I was a senior. In my time, the editor had to be the valedictorian." Sometimes, however, the valedictorian couldn't write. Nor could the nun who served as moderator of the paper. So Gilda did all the work: wrote, edited, did the layouts too, and the presswork. "That's probably how the publisher in me was born," she smiled.

This leads to an aside on karma. According to Gilda, the people with whom we form exceptionally close ties in this life are reincarnations of people whose lives were also linked to ours in previous lives. "Troubled relationships should be worked out. Otherwise you are doomed to be involved with each other again and again." Today, her mother and she have managed to become friends. "So have my husband and I," she added with a wink.

We talked of other relationships in her life. " Marami namang lumigaw sa akin ," she admitted with disarming candor. "But that didn't help my insecurity. I had no self-esteem to speak of."

At 22, she married a lawyer, Marcelo Fernando, who was 23. "I chose him because he did not make me feel insecure," she said. "And because I loved him, of course," she added, smiling again. "But it was very important to me that my partner did not make me feel even less sure than I was. I could never have married one of those cocky, arrogant, high-powered young men."

It took her a long, long time to get over that insecurity, a long, long time to even determine what the problem was. "I was Flora and Reve, those characters in my stories. I felt ugly and useless. I felt everything I did was unimportant."

This, despite her writing, for which she kept winning prizes. "It surprised me that people liked my stories. I was very touched that Franz Arcellana thought me good, that he wanted to spend time teaching me."

I remember telling Gilda one time about a critical piece on her stories done by Thelma Arambulo, a colleague at the U.P. It astonished her that anyone was still studying her fiction. "Do the students today take any interest in those old stories?" she asked. "They must sound so old fashioned. They were the work of a very young person. I stopped writing fiction 35 years ago. I don't even read fiction anymore."

But she read the book I gave her, a collection of my own tales, about which I felt unsure, never having written anything like them before. And she said such warmly encouraging things about it that my heart glowed like a bright red apple.

And when she agreed to come to listen to my students' analyses of "A Wilderness of Sweets,'" she was tremendously pleased. "They are so bright, so insightful. They make me feel good about my work."

While her children were growing up, she was a full-time housewife, thought she was also always a "working woman". She did not like the role of "corporate wife". Husband Marcelo, was a fast-rising Meralco executive, and she had to socialize with the business and society people. It was a strain. "I didn't dress the way they did and couldn't talk about shopping and restaurants and the latest trips abroad. It was more fun to go dancing, which I did with my gay male friends, at the Coco Banana , since my husband didn't much care for it." This phase is reflected in some of her tales, including "Magnanimity."

When she decided to work, she decided to do it at home. "I would have wanted to work for a magazine, which was what most writers did, but it would have meant neglecting my home and my children." Besides, she was reluctant to enter a world she could not share with her husband.

Intermittently for six years, Gilda wrote the column, called "Tempest in a Teapot," first for the Chronicle , then for the Observer , and then for Veritas . This is another thing she was insecure about. "My style isn't right for magazine columns and essays. I'm not organized. I tend to ramble. I write as I speak. My fiction is different. I don't know why."

I told her that this was the reason I could not believe she meant it when she declared she would never write fiction again.

Gilda assured me that she was serious about this. But she had agreed to allow Anvil Publishing to publish a new combined edition of her two story collections, both of which had been out of print for a while. ( Note: the book, titled Story Collection was published in 1994. )

Besides writing magazine articles, she corrected students' written analyses of "cases" for the Asian Institute of Management. This was boring work, and spoiled her eyes forever. She knew nothing about business, but was hired because she had mastery over the language, and enough horse sense to understand the point despite students' circumlocutions. For her part, she took the job because it paid well and because, again, it enabled her to work at home.

Early in her marriage, she also manufactured and distributed diaper bags, having gotten the idea from a pretty baby diaper bag someone had given her as a present, and discovered that all diaper bags were imported. She decided it would be a simple matter to produce a local version. She didn't know how to sew, but there were seamstresses she could hire. She would design the bats, choose the materials herself, going all the way to Divisoria-"remnants," they were called, bits of this and that-and lug them back in a jeepney. It was a matter of pride not to take a cab. The cab fare would have eaten into her profits. She employed three modistas and one "wrapper; "and supplied Rustan's, Aguinaldo's, Everlast, Makati Supermart, Manila C.O.D. (malls were nonexistent). The idea was pirated by others and soon ceased to be profitable.

Like the bag business, the legendary GCF Books was run from her house, a sprawling one-story affair on Panay Avenue, practically hidden by trees and a profusion of plants.

When she first invited me over for lunch, her house struck me as exactly the sort of place I had imagined as her "space." As the famous houseboat must have seemed inevitably Anais Nin's, and Monk's House unmistakably Virginia Woolf's. The sunken living room, watched over by Julie Lluch's sculptures, the large Bob Feleo piece against one wall, the old opium bed, the open corridor, which is really a little wooden bridge over a small pool, the den with its book-lined wall, the lanai with a hammock hanging from a huge bougainvillea tree, the old German shepherd called Boris, sleeping on a little hill of smooth gray stones (gone now, unfortunately), under a 25-year-old tree whose name Gilda doesn't know, but which sprouts the loveliest feathery flowers, white and lavender.

It is one of the airiest, sunniest houses I have even been in. Everywhere you look, you see gardens. Two steps, and you are within touching distance of a fat, leafy, contented plant. It is the first house to be build by Lindy Locsin. "He who had just finished the U.P. Chapel."

The GCF books "office" was a narrow room, one of its walls consisting entirely of windows. Another wall was covered with shelves. A long dining table (where she served me a delightful brunch consisting of champurado and tuyo , and a variety of the freshest vegetables) occupied most of the floor space. A door opened into a smaller room, from which Gilda produced several blouses which she was in the process of putting together, combining material from the camisas of different old ternos in lovely, unexpected patterns. This was her new thing: clothes designing. The blouses were to be given to her daughters and daughters-in-law as Christmas gifts.

Though she declared firmly that her decision to get out of publishing big illustrated books was final, the nostalgia was unmistakable when she spoke of her other "babies," the books she produced, children not just of her brain, but of her heart and soul. She called them "identity books," her contribution to the Filipino's obsessive search.

That was in the early 70's, before courses on "popular culture" or "folk culture" were being taught, before degrees in Philippine Studies were being granted. Gilda had worked as Associate Editor on the Philippine Heritage series, which ran to 10 volumes. This is how she learned to make books. She had, for some time, been running a small shop located inside Solidaridad Galleries on Padre Faura (her first experience as a tindera , she says). When it closed, she opened another antique/folk art shop called Junque, on A. Mabini.

She wanted to recall things she was about to forget, but which she knew were important-things people had told her-stories, legends, descriptions of lifestyles, riddles, proverbs, recipes. She wanted to pass them on, with intelligence and sensitivity and charm.

She rummaged through rare books and old magazines, even enrolled in a couple of courses at the U.P. "I guess when you have a vision, you will find the right people to help make the dream, come true."

She wanted to produce books that would be both beautiful and intelligent, researched in a scholarly manner but written in a popular style. The measure of GCF Books' success is that it lasted 13 years, and produced 11 books, each one a gem. "Its time is past. Now everyone knows how to do an illustrated book. And Filipiniana is in -I think I had a small part in that. I gave up fiction for that. Fiction writing to me is really just self-indulgence, too much of an ego trip."

Couldn't it also be a reaching out? I asked.

"Maybe it is. But even when you do reach some readers, even when you do touch them, they are so few! Admit it, how many people read fiction in English?"

She wanted to reach more people to teach them things through books. "But first, I had to learn them myself."

We had long since finished lunch, and were about to be late for Anton's play. Gilda asked for the bill, and we dashed off to the CCP.

After the performance, which, we agreed, was as original as all Anton Juan productions are, Gilda told me she wanted to inquire about ballet lessons.

"For whom? I asked.

"For me, of course," she laughed. "I've been wanting to choreograph a ballet with a friend. But I lack the technical skill."

The people in the CCP's ballet office were unfazed by Gilda's being 63. Dancing had nothing to do with age, they said. This delighted Gilda, as it is a favorite theme of hers.

She had decided, at this point, that we were going back to her house for ice cream. "Actually," she said, as we headed for Panay Avenue, "age does make a difference. I like my present self now much better than my thirty-year-old self. I don't know why people are afraid of growing old. It's nice to be old."

Perhaps, I said, that's why she didn't look old.

"The best thing about being this age," Gilda said, "is that one finally feels free. Free to be and do everything one would have been and done if one hadn't been too scared when one was younger. These days, I can be absolutely outrageous.

I asked for an example of her outrageousness.

"I will give you an example of what I was like before, and you will see what I mean." One time, she said, she asked Erwin Castillo, the writer-artist, to paint a mural on her bathroom wall. He painted, with great verisimilitude, three naked figures: a woman with green hair standing between a brown macho -type man and a yellow poet sort of guy. She was too embarrassed to live with it, and too embarrassed to tell Erwin of her embarrassment. "Do you know what I did? I edited it! I actually erased their genitals with paint thinner. Naturally, it didn't solve anything. The mural still made me uncomfortable. It threatened and irritated my husband. And it offended Erwin. After all, I had defaced his artwork. Now, that's the sort of thing that would never happen to me now."

Over ice cream, Gilda talked about her present. One phase was over, the book-publishing phase. It was time to move on. She was not sure what the new phase would be. An art-curating phase perhaps; or a costurera phase, or a dancer phase. Not knowing is part of the excitement.

A few days later, I was back in Gilda's house again, to fill in the blanks in the profile.

Gilda was in the middle of a meeting over her latest book, the "joint autobiography" she had written with Mariel Francisco. Babeth Lolarga (the editor) and Manni Chaves (the art director) were there. Gilda made room for me at the worktable and insisted on serving me a late breakfast of pancakes, hotdogs, and scrambled eggs.

It was like old times. They were deciding about illustrations. The book was to be a pastiche of many enchanting elements. memories, dreams, drawings by a grandson, old photographs, cartoons, greeting cards, sundry memorabilia. It was still title-less. Gilda liked "Two Quezon City Housewives," but Mariel was dissatisfied with that. And, Manni added, Gilda's title sounded too much like Krip Yuson's Confessions of a Quezon City House Husband .

"What do you think of Two Old Women in Tennis Shoes?" Gilda asked me. I thought it was wonderful. So did Babeth. But Gilda said Mariel would never agree. ( The book, released in 1995, was finally titled Ladies' Lunch and Other Ways to Wholeness .)

Corazon Alvina, invaluable part of the old GCF Books team, dropped in, and was also plied with breakfast even if it was now past 11 a.m. Gilda asked if she had some memorabilia that could be photographed, "like dried leaves, for instance".

Conversation turned to the art exhibit which Gilda had been asked by the Metropolitan Museum and the French Embassy to curate, then jumped to the sudden death of Boris, the German shepherd. Babeth asked Gilda what her next book would be.

Fiction? I suggested hopefully.

"Maybe fiction for children," Gilda said. "We'll see."

In the gaps, I managed to ask Gilda the questions I had come to ask. Some of them were answered by Corazon, who has a sharper memory for some details, including details of Gilda's writing and publishing career.

My last question had to do with children and grandchildren.

There are four Fernando children. "Our best achievement, Marcelo's and mine," Gilda said, beaming, "what we have to show for our long, not always calm, life together-four bright, achieving, happy people."

Teodoro is a lawyer like his father, and is married to Lanelle Abueva, daughter of Dr. Jose Abueva; Manolo, an executive at MERALCO, and an accomplished chef, is married to Lilli Ann Dim; Patricia is an architect and is married to Roy Regalado, an engineer/contractor; and Marcelo Jr. works for Citibank and is married to Ernestine Villareal, abogada de campanilla . The latter couple is referred to by their mother as "our rich neighbors". The houses surrounding Marcelo's and Gilda's in the compound belong to Marcelo (Arcus) and Ernestine and to Manolo and Lilli Ann. Both (and the Bey-Lanelle house in Antipolo) were designed by Patricia and built by Roy. At the time of our interview, there were 7 grandchildren.

Unfortunately, none of them were around. And I knew that a third visit could not be squeezed in before my deadline.

Gilda walked me to my car, and we lingered under the trees a while, talking about this women-in-their-sixties group that she belongs to, who call themselves "Woman Plus". What they all have in common, Gilda said, is a refusal to stagnate. They have regular discussions on different topics. Another group she belongs to is called "Inner Work". A third group was just forming, called "Mama's Girls," consisting of women with problem mothers.

"No wonder you don't age!" I exclaimed. "You don't have the time!"

"The important thing is to be in touch with oneself, to peel off the useless layers, the disguises, to get to the inner core. Then one does not waste so much time and energy. This is what being happy means."

Suddenly she remembered a book she said I had to read, dashed back into the house, and returned before I could find my car keys. "Here. It's really Mariel's book. She lent it to me. But I'm a slow reader. You read it first."

The book-which had not yet found its way into the shelves of National-was Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, doctor of multi-cultural studies and clinical psychologist, artist, cantadora , singer of songs, teller of tales. (The book was later to become a bestseller.)

Gilda Cordero Fernando smiled at me.

I smiled back.

Since our interview, Gilda has published Ladies' Lunch and Other Ways to Wholeness , presented "Jamming on an Old Saya," a smash-hit fashion show featuring her own designs and creations, and contributed substantially to the success of Writers' Night-the writers' reunion and fundraiser held by the U.P. Creative Writing Center held in December every year-by donating several lovely items from her own collection, including the first two antique santos she had ever bought. She now has nine grandchildren.

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