Gilda Cordero-Fernando: 1932–2020

Although Gilda would bounce me, as a baby, on her knee, my earliest memory of her was as a kid 8 or 9 years of age accompanying my mother, Mercedes Nakpil Zialcita, to visit Gilda's mother, Tita Nene, at their apartment on San Marcelino St. in Malate, Manila. Most likely my mother went there as well to buy one of Tita Nene's famous cakes. The Nakpils and the Corderos became good friends as neighbors in Quiapo in the 1930s. The Corderos had a house almost in front of the Nakpil house. While ours was along the length of Calle Barbosa (now A. Bautista), theirs stood at the corner of Barbosa and Escaldo. According to my mom, little Gilda, with her two braided and beribboned pigtails swinging in the wind, would run across the narrow street to play with the Nakpils her age. The house made a deep impression on her, as we shall see.

When we visited Gilda and her mom, she was a young lady attired in the uniform of St. Theresa's College—navy blue skirt, white long-sleeved blouse, and a big soft ribbon hanging from the collar, also in navy blue. She entertained me by playing on the piano and singing snatches from a popular song, "Baka Maputikan" (Your clogs might get soiled):

Photo from the archives of Gilda Cordero-Fernando

Bukid ay basa,Tag-ulan noon,May isang mutya …

The fields were wet,The rains had come,There was this entrancing lass …

I would look up and gaze at her gentle eyes and those lips that, while seeming to pout, often relaxed into a warm smile.

Gilda became a famous short-story writer whose stories were collected into a book, The Butcher, the Baker and the Candlestick Maker (Cordero-Fernando 1962), copies of which she sent to her Nakpil friends. Being a bookworm, I tried reading her short stories. I was then 13 or 14. But they were too advanced for me. Rereading her short stories later in my life, I appreciated the artistry with which she could depict difficult situations like that of civilians in "People in War" who were forced to take extreme measures to save themselves from enemy soldiers gone berserk. She also became well-known as an essayist who regularly wrote short, easy-to-read essays for magazines. Sometimes, to my delight, they reminisced about Pagsanjan (her father's hometown), Malabon (her mother's), and the Nakpils. I do not now remember what she wrote about my family, but, when I was in my twenties, she told me that she loved its flavors—homemade ice cream churned from carabao milk, rich with egg yolks blended into it, and fragrant with fresh coffee. And its scents—Lola Manggoy (Petrona Nakpil vda. de Bautista) might have been a "tiny" woman, but she always exuded a lavender scent especially after her daily bath. And its sounds—on evenings, melodies by someone playing the piano, while a violin wailed—sailed across the narrow street to the Cordero residence.

From time to time, Gilda's path and mine would cross each other accidentally. "Kumusta [How are you]? How's your family?" One evening in 1960, our college freshman class at the Ateneo had a dancing party at their family bungalow in Quezon City. By then she was married to Atty. Marcelo Fernando and would mother four children nicknamed Bey, Mol, Arcus, and Wendy. She was a vivacious hostess and laughed with us gangly teenagers. Our paths would definitely meet when, in my late twenties, I went to the office of the illustrated encyclopedia-in-the-making Filipino Heritage and asked its editor-in-chief, Alfredo Roces (1977), if there were articles I could still write. He referred me to Gilda! She was one of the associate editors. She gave me a list of topics to look into. I dutifully wrote on each of them and submitted the drafts. Gilda's reaction was, "I like your writing style." That was praise indeed coming from a master of prose.

I left for Honolulu in 1973...