Nasty habits

(Second of two parts)

I don’t know what it is about our family that we always end up with helpers who are not the usual Inday we see in every other household.

In the past we had one helper who later turned out to be a runaway heiress. To my frustration, her parents already had her fetched even before I could gather enough material to do a script for another local adaptation of Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday.

Then, in the days when commerce graduates worked in banks and offices and not as domestic helpers abroad, we had an accountant keeping house for us. Of course, this was long ago – when doctors didn’t scurry to become nurses. Today, we have a certified schoolteacher making our home nice, pleasant and comfortable.

In my Tuesday column, I already told you about the ex-nun from Italy (She’s really Pinay) who worked for me in my halfway home. And I also related how she had brought with her runaway nuns from the convent who all stayed with us at home – until I realized one day that I was already running a dormitory in my house.

When one of the nuns turned out to be pregnant (hey, she was already on the way when she got to my place), we had to convince her to just go home to her parents – and she readily agreed. But for a while there, I considered adding maternity clinic to that little dormitory I had in my home.

Even if the pregnant ex-nun decided to leave my house, I still ended up with a child at home. How did this happen? Remember how I met this ex-nun helper through her sister, who worked as a receptionist in the gym?

Well, that receptionist-sister had given birth, but had to leave for abroad and she didn’t know where to leave her baby girl, who was then only a year old.

Although the receptionist-sister had a husband, he couldn’t attend to the baby because he was working as a security guard full-time. Could my ex-nun helper, who is the aunt of the baby girl, take the baby with her to my house? She did – and I agreed but only because the original arrangement was that the baby would stay in the godmother’s house at daytime and would only come to my house to sleep at night. But when the baby’s mother had left, the godmother suddenly decided she could not take the baby at daytime or at night. And so I was stuck with the baby 24 hours a day.

My little dormitory had closed down by then because all the former nuns staying there had already left (some by force). But from dormitory-for-ex-nuns, it was suddenly converted into a nursery.

Actually, I was quite fond of the child – always had been since I knew her when she was still in her mother’s womb (the mom did reception work at the gym up to the last day of her pregnancy). When the baby was born, she was immediately brought to work (in the gym) by the mother and my gym buddies then surely must remember this child. Actors Emilio Garcia and probably even Roy Alvarez and Victor Neri may remember that baby who was brought to the gym every day by her mother.

Having a one-year-old child, however, brought little problems here and there. For one thing, the child slowed down my ex-nun helper in her house chores because there was a kid with her all the time.

When the child turned two, we were faced with another problem because all you have to do is ask a pediatrician and he or she will tell you all about that stage in a child’s life called terrible 2. All throughout that period, I kept praying for another year to come by soon and so that the kid would finally be over that stage, except that when she turned three, she just became plain terrible.

I couldn’t blame the kid because she was rebelling that early in life after her mother had abandoned her to work overseas. She purposely called her aunt Mama, and began referring to her real mother as Tita.

As for the child’s father, he also has a little chapter in the story. When he was assigned to work in San Juan town proper (a few minutes away from Greenhills, where my halfway house is), he brought up this not-so-funny idea of him also moving in with us. With all the ex-nuns gone, except for my helper, there was plenty of room for him in that extra unit in my house.

There would just be him, his child and the child’s aunt (my ex-nun helper), who is actually his sister-in-law.

Now, I may have been disappointed about not having written another local adaptation of Roman Holiday when our former runaway heiress-helper left us prematurely, but certainly, it wasn’t in my agenda to gather material for a remake of the George Estregan-Beth Bautista movie, Huwag Bayaw! I have a lot of bad traits and being malicious is the worst of them. Of course, my ex-nun helper didn’t like the idea either. In fact, she was offended by the mere suggestion. The kid’s father was not allowed to set foot in my house from that time on.

Eventually, I decided to also let the kid go. Heck, I wasn’t the one who had fun when that child was conceived and eventually brought into this world. She is not an orphan. She has a father who had a job and was spending his entire salary on himself and was even receiving remittances from his OFW wife. No, I did not drive the kid away. But my ex-nun helper must have sensed that I was starting to get uncomfortable with the set-up and so she brought the kid to the father to teach him some responsibility.

With the kid gone, my ex-nun helper became restless again. There wasn’t much to do at home and she started visiting friends even on days she wasn’t off. She’d just send a text informing me that she was in Bulacan to spend the night there.

Eventually, we had a heart-to-heart talk and she told me that she’d want to leave my employ. No, it wasn’t because of me – certainly not because I would have bonked her on the head if she had said that (just kidding!). But she found it necessary to leave for abroad because she wanted to be able to provide for the four children of her half-sister in Mindanao. She could stay with me, but only if I could afford to pay her in dollars, which she knew was not possible – unless, of course, she went to GMA 7 management and negotiated on my behalf.

I did give her blessings – no, not to negotiate with Channel 7, but to leave for abroad, even if deep in my heart I didn’t want to let her go. For all the headaches she had caused me because of her communal attitude (she shares everything she has – but, sigh, mostly at my expense), she is a very good person. I therefore allowed her to work on her papers – even on days she was supposed to be working for me.

But one time, my sister (this is a real sister, not a nun-sister) came for a vacation and my only request from this ex-nun helper was to stay home just for that weekend – and she denied me that. When I woke up one day, I saw a complete stranger working in the kitchen. Asked who she was, she said that she was put there by my ex-nun helper as temp. Again, that was so thoughtful of her to bring in a substitute. But I’ve had it. She was leaving me anyway so I thought I’d just let her go – right away.

Today, she is in Dubai working as a lady driver to a consul. (I swear she has so many skills and talents). She tries to communicate with me, but I don’t answer her calls. More than hurt, I’m really just tired and still recovering from the stress of having operated a dormitory, a nursery and a would-have-been house of sin (had she allowed the brother-in-law to move in) all because she wanted to help so many people.

In this season of Lent, I’ve been analyzing myself and realized that although I can share whatever blessings that come my way, I can only give so much. I can give, but before it starts to hurt and not until – not necessarily in accordance with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

I’m learning though. But I’m far from being perfect – and nobody else is in this world. No, not any of the ex-nuns who came to live with me. I swear, even amongst them, there were strife, envy, jealousy and deception.

For all those years they spend in the convent, they, too, had nasty habits.