A Christmas away from home
MY children were the focus of my anxiety. Fatimah and Leon, aged 9 and 4, respectively, were in Manila while I was across the Pacific Ocean, in Mexico City, laying the foundations of another kind of life, that of a “fugitive” not from the Revised Penal Code, but from martial law. Christmas was around the corner and my children were not with me. They were in Manila with their father; they were in no physical danger, they were with family. That was consoling, yet my sense of dislocation was somewhat overwhelming.
Fortunately, I was not completely alone; my uncle Leon Ma. Guerrero was the Philippine ambassador to Mexico and I was staying at the official residence with him, in an exclusive colonia (village) called Lomas de Chapultepec. I had family; not only was he my mother’s elder brother, he was also my baptismal godfather, my ninong. I did not want to be a financial burden so I did not tell him that I had begun working, without the official permit, simply because frugal as I was, cash was running out.
Who would want to hire a foreigner without working papers? My uncle had a stack of Mexican dailies on his desk but one morning I saw him browsing through “The News,” which was apparently sent to English-speaking ambassadors. I looked at the classified ads section and to my surprise there was a great demand for English teachers, so I called and was accepted sight unseen. Apparently, the English teacher that the language center had hired backed out the day before classes were to begin at Johnson & Johnson, their biggest account. They were desperate and I was a Godsend.
The classes began at 7 a.m. and since the embassy residence was at the other end of town, I had to be standing at the corner of Paseo de las Palmas and Aconcagua at exactly 5:45 a.m. to catch the pesero (community taxi) to Metro Chapultepec which goes directly to MetroIxtapala, and from there take another pesero to Johnson & Johnson. My pupils were the Mexican executives of that company; there were eight of them with varied levels of English, a teacher’s nightmare. Horrified at my daily routine, my uncle offered to send me in the embassy car, but I politely refused. He could have had problems with the CO; besides, I was getting to know Mexico City, the world’s largest, from the crack of dawn, its waking hours, to noontime, all the way to mid- afternoon when I had to go to another company, Mecánica Falk, in the northern fringes of the city, Industrial Vallejo, taking peseros, buses, and the subway all the time. Are you punishing yourself? – My uncle asked. I was not; it was my way of coping, of not having an idle moment to worry about Fatimah and Leon.
My pupils at Johnson & Johnson invited me to my first Mexican Noche Buena held in someone’s condominium located in a district with clusters of low-rise residential buildings, surrounded with commercial areas. There were grandparents who tried to make me feel at home and were curious about the Philippines; they knew about the galleon trade and the revolution. A gang of grandchildren were milling around a Christmas tree, asking excitedly what time Santa Claus would arrive. It was potluck; guests came in bringing bacalao (to us, a Lenten dish), stuffed turkey, Russian salad, mashed potatoes, Mexican dishes like mole Poblano, cochinita pibil, chiles enogadas. Like Filipinos Mexicans love to sing and dance; we drank various types of tequila and mexcal. In those early days, I was not used to eating spicy food, so I felt I had flames in my mouth and fire in my throat.
One of the aunts lured the children to go downstairs to a common garden so another aunt could arrange the gifts under the Christmas tree. When they returned, they ran for the gifts and were told that Santa had just left. Suddenly I felt at home. The Mexicans are like us in many ways and I never felt like a foreigner during the 18 years I lived there. The grandfather noticed that no one had given me a present, so he gave me a brass crucifix, which I treasure to this day.
My uncle Leoni was not excited about Christmas and it was probably because he was childless during his first marriage. After all, Christmas is for children. However, he did have an inherited respect for the day Christ was born so he invited me to a Christmas lunch at the Zone Rosa, which was the elegant tourist trap in the 70’s. He said he had made reservations at a Chinese restaurant and had ordered Peking duck. Are you sure about the Peking duck? — I asked with unblinking wariness. Before that, we passed by a plush leather boutique to pick up knee-high I Miller boots my uncle had ordered and a matching leather midi coat. He was making up for all the birthdays and Chrismases he had missed. Needless to say, I became the most fashionable passenger of the Chapultepec-Ixtapalapa subway line.
As it turned out, the Chinese restaurant on Londres street was a hoax; though someone who spoke with a Chinese accent owned it, he probably had never seen, much less cooked or eaten a Peking duck in his life; perhaps he had never even seen Peking (now Beijing). I thought my uncle was going to lose his temper, but it was Christmas so with disciplined wit, he put the impostor in his place and we left to have lunch across the street at a place called Normandie.
That was my Christmas away from home, separated from my beloved children. What an exacting memoir this is.
(ggc1898@gmail.com)