Her own woman - WHY AND WHY NOT by Nelson A. Navarro

New York – A dear friend I shall call Vivian is the epitome of the Filipino woman who has so reinvented herself she can never again fit back into Philippine society. At once caring and discreet, she has willed herself never to pry into anybody’s life nor to allow anybody to pry into hers. A true woman of mystery.

Bright and wise in the ways of the world, she never speaks ill of anybody or anything. Many times I’ve tried to provoke her into saying something nasty about human vermin like Idi Amin or Pol Pot, but I’ve never caught her off-guard.

Always, she will say something like "It’s a pity" or "There should have been a way to avoid that terrible thing." In the 1970s and 1980s when Marcos-bashing was the favorite sport in our expatriate circle, she shunned all partisan talk.

Now in her radiant fifties, Vivian is no prissy old-maid. In her UP days, she went around with giggly sorority girls who swooned day and night about boyfriends, weddings and living happily ever after. But she straightened out after graduation, joined a dynamic business firm and climbed up the executive ladder in no time at all.

Although she lived the good life or close to it in Manila, Vivian felt trapped. She yearned for adventure and for a crack at the bigger world beyond. One day, she packed her bags to go on one of those all-expenses-paid European vacations expected of upwardly mobile Filipinos.

After hopping around Europe, she came to New York, fell in love with the place and decided to stay on. The first time I met her at a mutual friend’s apartment near Lincoln Center, she was gunning for her first American job.

"I’m taking a typing test at this international agency," she said. Being fluent and familiar with English, bright Filipino women like Vivian, of course, dominate that agency’s secretarial pool to this day. She was a shoo-in.

Next time I saw Vivian, she was already ensconced in her own charming studio in Turtle Bay, the chic and pricey neighborhood where the agency was located.

For Vivian, the whole point of living in New York was to be completely free from country, family and friends to live by one’s own rules.

Not that she was ever remiss with certain duties, particularly towards family and friends. She made regular long-distance calls and took annual vacations to the old homeland. She dutifully attended certain birthdays and was known as a generous gift-giver.

But she drew the line on her personal life. We never knew if she had a love life or not. She was vague about the "significant other" we presumed was waiting for her in Manila or the suitors who flocked to her apartment.

Vivian was bent on self-improvement. For her, the secretarial pool was no more than a brief career stopover. She took a master’s in night school, applied for a switch to an executive position and volunteered for "hardship posts" in Africa. This enabled her to move up faster in the hierarchy and pile up huge savings. She had no time for romance. Or so we assumed.

Just after she returned from one of her Manila trips, we had lunch and she blurted from out of the blue: "It’s over."

What she meant was that she had lost the boyfriend we knew nothing about. There had been a shot-gun wedding with another woman, also unnamed. End of the story. Vivian never brought up the matter ever again.

Many years would pass until, on this trip to New York I rang her up and we found time to gorge on paella at this Spanish restaurant near her place. We talked about everything and everybody. Then it was time to call it a night.

"You know I got married," she said softly as we were about to put on our coats. I couldn’t believe my ears. I’d heard rumors of her getting married, but these were never confirmed and I never bothered to inquire.

"I thought it would never happen," she went on. "I was prepared to be alone, a spinster all my life. But he came over one day and asked me to marry him. And I said yes."

The only thing amiss was that her husband lived in California. "I can’t move there and he refuses to move here," Vivian added, sounding not a bit disturbed. "We see each other when we see each other. It works and we’re happy."

So typically Vivian to keep friends guessing. She didn’t bother to give the lucky man’s name or circumstances. Was he the wimp who yielded to the shot gun many years ago? Perhaps I will eventually know, but only in Vivian’s good time. In a flash, we were done with good-byes and off she vanished into the cool Manhattan night.

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Nelson A. Navarro's e-mail address: <[email protected]>