Shame & scandal in the family

"We’ve got plenty of that!” exclaimed my cousin. I swear it sounded like a boast. I pinched my cousin in the fattest part of her thigh and whispered, “Shhh! Keep your mouth shut. Do you want our ancestors to turn in their graves?”

“Oh shucks!” came the response from a dozen pair of grinning eyes that were all glued to my cousin, waiting with bated breath for her to bare it all.

What sort of scandals were they waiting to hear? The one of the heiress cousin who was jilted by her boyfriend so she eloped with the family chauffer? The maiden aunt who fell in love with the postman and literally didn’t wait for him to ring twice to say “yes”? The uncle who had three foreign wives  ah, make that five wives  despite his being asthmatic? And what about those gorgeous twin sisters who traded husbands because they were once childhood sweethearts except they each ended up with the other  in paper, which was quickly corrected  in practice? Throw in loose dalliances front, right, left and center.

“If you ask me, I could write a book,” said my amiga, who stood up to be identified. “It was just a question of how well the family managed to keep the lid on the scandals. My own mother fell in love with her dance instructor and married him in an Elvis Presley chapel in Las Vegas. We made him sign a pre-nuptial agreement without my mother’s knowledge.”

Blood is indeed thicker than water, right? 

Every family has its share of dark secrets and no matter how scandalous they may seem, count on the family to circle the wagons and deflect any verbal assaults and nasty jeers.

Why do people fall into this pit? Surely, you cannot fault their proper upbringing. Was it a weak trait, a flaw in character? Each child, in fact, was raised under an honorable code of good behavior and right conduct, sometimes with resident aunts who did nothing but pray for the virtue of piety (and common sense) to prevail in each choice made by female relations.

 “But you’re missing the spice, the juice, the flavor in life without these indiscretions,” commented another cousin. “Where would you be if you didn’t have Paulo in your life?” She pointed to an aunt. (Paulo was the illegitimate grandson of Tita Belle, who turned out to be so gentle and thoughtful that he must have plucked the sun out of the sky and brought it to his lola’s face, brightening each day of her life).

“How could your own son have turned into a man without this ultimate test of being a father?” he asked.

Just a rundown of what brought spice into the family:

• A cousin adopted a baby from the squatters’ area. She took the baby to Europe where she grew up to become a museum and art gallery restorer. One time, the mother decided to take her daughter back to Manila. She said, “I want you to re-acquaint yourself with our Filipino roots.” She brought her to the squatters’ area where volunteers were feeding the homeless as part of a social outreach program. Her daughter was shocked at the squalor and abject poverty of the residents and surroundings. “Mom, this is too depressing; how could people live in filth and be treated worse than the scum of the earth?” She was never told that this was her birthplace.

• A cousin failed his bar exams but went to C.M. Recto to get a bogus diploma. When he applied in a law firm submitting his pseudo diploma, no one checked into his background. He became a top criminal lawyer. To this day, no one found out and, even if they did, he can’t be touched anymore because he bought the law firm.

• A sister’s fiancé was drafted in the US Army. She discovered that she was pregnant but in order to keep tongues from wagging, her mother passed off the baby as hers. “A menopausal baby,” she claimed. The real mother, however, was asked to nurse and care for the infant. The baby grew up to become a concert pianist. Her “Ate” was her inspiration who encouraged her to play the music in her heart. She was never told who her real mother was.

• An aunt fell in love with a priest and he renounced his vows to marry her. They had three sons, all mentally challenged but that didn’t serve as a hindrance. One son became a professor in calculus, another was a combustion engineer and worked for a French auto company, while the youngest became a symphony conductor who composed beautiful opus dedicated to his mother. They spoke three languages. 

Suddenly, all eyes were on another friend who stood up and said, “Hey listen! I, too, have something deliciously wicked in my ancestry. Why don’t we talk about the lolitas, sheilas, jezebels (and rosarios?) in our bloodline and how they made the most of what there was in life? This is a survival’s saga.”

There was thunderous applause as each one turned their chair to a “moderator” who took the floor and announced, “Who wants to go first?”