My Early Experiences in Housekeeping
I Set Up Housekeeping—Romoldo’s Ideas of Arranging Furniture—My Cheerful Environment—Romoldo’s Success in Making “Hankeys”—He Introduces the Orphan Tikkia as His Assistant—The Romance of Romoldo and Tikkia.
At the period of my advent in Capiz there were but two other American women there, wives of military men. Later our numbers were increased by the wives of several civilian employees and two more women teachers. In those first days the hospitality of the military women made no small break in the routine of my daily life. At the time of our appointment we teachers had been assured by a circular from the War Department that we should enjoy the privileges of the military commissary; but this ruling had been changed in the several months that had elapsed, and I found myself stranded with practically no access to American tinned fruits and vegetables. I ate rice, fish, and bananas with the best grace I could; and when, after a month of boarding, I decided to set up housekeeping, and one of these ladies surreptitiously and with fear and trembling presented me with a can of concentrated lye, my gratitude knew no bounds. My Filipino servant, named Romoldo, whom I had dubbed “The Magnificent,” was set to work cleaning up my prospective dwelling; and I went out and secured the services of a trooper of the Tenth Cavalry to supplement the deficiencies in Romoldo’s housecleaning instincts by some American brawn and muscle.
The trooper, a coal-black African, had picked up a great deal of Spanish, which he spoke with the corruption of vowel sounds peculiar to his race and color. In addition to collecting the stipend agreed upon, he incidentally borrowed two dollars (U.S.) of me. Now, I was brought up in Missouri and knew enough of the colored race to be sure that I was bidding a fond adieu to the two dollars when I handed them to the trooper. But I was not prepared for my henchman’s persistence in having the extension of time made formal. I was willing to forget the two dollars and have done with them, but the African would not permit them to rest in peace. He presented himself regularly every two weeks to ask for another fortnight’s extension. Finally, when the regiment was about to leave the Islands, I insisted that he should accept the two dollars as an evidence of my good-will toward the United States Army and the defenders of the flag, and he was graciously pleased so to do.
The trooper’s muscles were strong as his habits of renewal, and he and Romoldo scoured the floors of my new establishment until the shiny black accretions of twenty-five years of petroleum and dirt had given way to unpolished roughness, and then I set to work to get a new polish. Then we took hold of the furniture—heavy, wooden, Viennese stuff—and scrubbed it with zeal. My landlord came to look in occasionally and was hurt. He said plaintively that they had had no contagious diseases, and he asked why this deluge of soap and water. I basely declined to admit the flat truth, which was that the floors and chairs were too greasy for my taste, but attributed our energy to a mad American zeal for scouring. He said, “Ah, costumbre!” and seemed to feel that the personal sting of my actions had been removed.
In due time the house was clean, and I moved in. The sala, or drawing-room, was at least forty by thirty feet, with two sides arcaded and filled with shell windows, which, when drawn back, gave the room almost the open-air effect of a gallery. It was furnished with two large gilt mirrors, a patriarchal cane-seated sofa, several wooden armchairs, eleven majolica pedestals for holding jardinières, and two very small tables. These last-named articles “the Magnificent” placed at the head of the apartment in such a position as to divide its cross wall into thirds, and then arranged all the chairs in two rows leading from the two tables, beginning with the most patriarchal armchair and ending with the dining-room chair, the leg of which was tied on with a string. The effect was rigidly mathematical; and when my landlady came in and adorned each table with a potted rose geranium, stuck all over with the halves of empty egg-shells to give it the appearance of flowering, I felt that it was time to assert myself. The egg-shells went promptly into the garbage box, and the chairs and tables were pulled about to achieve the unpremeditated effect of our own rooms. Then I went out for a walk, and returning found that Romoldo had restored things to his own taste. Again I broke up his formation, so the next time he tried a new device. He put one table at the top of the room and one at the bottom, with the chairs arranged in a circle around each one. This gave the pleasing impression to one entering the room that a card game was ready to begin. Again Romoldo’s efforts were treated with contempt.
For at least two weeks a deadly combat went on between Romoldo and me, in which I finally came off victor. At the end of that time he seemed to have accustomed himself to our ideas of decoration. He had, in our week’s deluging, cleaned up the lamps of the chandeliers, brushed down the cobwebs, and removed some half-dozen baskets of faded and dust-laden paper flowers. He administered the ironical consolation meanwhile that their destruction did not matter, since my admiring pupils would see that the supply was renewed. To my eternal sorrow he was a true prophet, and I had to contemplate green chrysanthemums and blue roses, and a particularly offensive hand-painted basket made of plates of split shell. However, the potted palms and ferns with which I ornamented the eleven pedestals made atonement; and when I came in after a hard day’s work and saw the unreal, golden-tinted light of afternoon filling the dignified old room, I found it home-like and lovely in spite of the paper flowers and the shell basket.
My bedroom was half as large as the sala, with a small room adjoining it which I used for a dining-room, and at the back there were a kitchen, a bathroom, closets, and a bamboo porch. For this shelter, furnished as it was, I paid the munificent sum of twenty-five pesos Mexican currency, or twelve and one-half dollars gold per month.
As my house was located over the second saloon in town—one of the regular, innocent, grocery-looking Filipino breed—and as it commanded a fine view of the plaza, guard mount, retreat, and Sunday morning church procession, I had at least all the excitement that was going in Capiz. The American soldiers swore picturesquely over their domino and billiard games down stairs; the “ruffle of drums” (though why so called I know not, for it consists of a blare of trumpets) woke up the sultry stillness at nine A.M.; the great church-bells struck the hours and threw in a frenzy of noise on their own account at some six or eight regular periods during the day; at twelve, noon, the village band stationed itself on the plaza to run a lively opposition to the bells; and at sunset the charming ceremony of retreat brought us all out to see the flag drop down, and to hear the clear, long bugle notes; and there were sick call, mess call, and several other calls. Not the least beautiful of these was “taps.” I used to wait for it in the perfect stillness of starlit nights when the Filipinos had all gone to bed, and the houses were ever so faintly revealed by the lanterns burning dimly in front, and the faintest gleam told where the river was slipping by. There would be no sound save the step of the trumpeter picking his way up the street. Then the church clock would strike—not the ordinary bell, but a deep-throated one that could have been heard for miles—and as the vibrations of the last stroke died away, the first high-pitched, sweet notes would ring out, to fade away in the ineffable sadness of the closing strain.
But if there was much that was novel and more that was noisy in those first experiences, there was also plenty of irritation. As I stated before, I had brought Romoldo from Iloilo to Capiz with the idea of using him for a cook. In the days when I was still boarding, he had confirmed me in this intention by stating that he had had experience in that line with an American army officer. He was particularly enthusiastic over his achievements with “hankeys.” For a long while, I could make nothing of this word, but at last I discovered that it was his corruption of “pancakes.” I found out this fact by asking Romoldo to explain how he made “hankeys,” and by recognizing among his ingredients milk, eggs, and flour.
As the Filipina with whom I boarded professed to be eager to learn American cookery, I told Romoldo to make some “hankeys.” In the language of Virgil, I “shudder to relate” what those “hankeys” were. There were three, nicely piled on top of one another, after our time-honored custom. No words could fitly describe them. They resembled unleavened bread, soaked in a clarifying liquid, heated, pressed down, and polished on both sides. The Filipina tried to conceal her disgust, and pretended to accept my explanation that they were only a caricature of our loved breakfast delicacy; but I could see that she thought I was trying to cover up my newly acquired sense of national deficiency.
However, when I set up housekeeping, Romoldo was promoted to the office of chief cook and only bottle washer. He conveyed to me a delicate intimation that it was not proper for me to live without a female attendant, and said that he had a friend—a young woman lately orphaned—who needed work and would be glad to have the position. I was sufficiently unsophisticated in Filipino ways to take this statement at its face value. As the orphan was willing to labor for a consideration of one dollar gold per month and room, the experiment could not be an expensive one.
The orphan duly arrived, escorted by Romoldo. He carried her trunk also, consisting of several garments tied up in a cotton handkerchief.
Her name, as Romoldo pronounced it, was Tikkia (probably Eustaquia), and I could have wished she had been handsomer and younger. She was a heavy-browed, pock-marked female, with a mass of cocoanut-oiled tresses streaming down her back, and one leg, bare from the knee down, rather obtrusively displaying its skinny shin where her dress skirt was looped up and tucked in at the waist. She had no petticoat, and her white chemisette ended two inches below the waist line. As it was not belted down, it crept out and lent a comical suggestion of zouave jacket to the camisa, or waist, of sinamay (a kind of native cloth made of hemp fibres). She understood not one word of Spanish or English.
When I occupied my new home for the first night, I “ordered” fried chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner, and then went out in the kitchen and cooked them. The army quartermaster had loaned me a range. Romoldo displayed an intelligent interest in the cooking lesson, but Tikkia seemed bored. When the potatoes were done, I gave them to Tikkia to mash. Romoldo was in the dining-room, setting the table. I told her in my best mixed Spanish and Visayan to mash them, and then to put them on the stove a few minutes in order to dry out any water in them. She understood just that one word “water”; and when I returned, after being out of the kitchen a minute, the potatoes were swimming in a quart of liquid. So I dined on fried chicken.
For the first two or three weeks there were many ludicrous accidents in my kitchen and some irritating ones. But on the whole Romoldo took hold of things very well; and though my menu broadened gradually, it was not long before he had learned a few simple dishes, and my labor of supervision was much lighter. I said that I was pleased with Romoldo to the enlisted man who was in charge of the officers’ mess and who incidentally made some market purchases for me. He said, “You ain’t particular,” with a finality that left me no defence. He was mistaken, however. I am particular, but at that time I was still in the somnambulance of philanthropy which brought us pedagogues to the Philippines.
I am willing to admit to-day that I vastly overrated Romoldo’s services, and yet, considering the untutored state of his mind and the extent of his salary, they were a good investment. There has been among some Americans here a carping and antagonistic spirit displayed toward Filipinos, which reflects little credit upon our national consistency or charity. We have a habit of uttering generalities about one race on the authority of a single instance; whereas, with our own, the tendency is to throw out of consideration those single instances in which the actual, undeniable practice of the American is a direct confutation of what his countrymen declare is the race standard. My kitchen under Romoldo’s touches was not perfect, but I have seen worse in my native land.
Romoldo being a young and rather attractive man, and Tikkia such a female pirate, I insist that my failure to suspect a romance is at least partially justified; and certainly never by word or glance did they betray the least interest in each other. But some days after my establishment had begun to run smoothly, one of the military ladies asked me to dinner. The punkah string was pulled by a murderous-looking ex-insurrecto, who fixed me with a basilisk glance, half entreaty, half reproach. It became so painful that toward the end of dinner I asked my hostess if his expression was due to his general frame of mind or to a special aversion toward pedagogues. She replied that he was probably bracing himself to approach me on a topic consuming his very vitals, or as much of them, at least, as may be expressed in absent-mindedness. Tikkia was his matrimonio, and I, the maestra had taken her and given her to Romoldo, and the twain lived in my house! The lady added that Tikkia was not matrimonio en iglesia—that is, married in church—but only matrimonio pro tem.
Pedro came into the sala after dinner and made his petition with humility. He extolled his kindness to the ungrateful Tikkia, and denounced Romoldo as a fiend and liar. He tried hard to weep, but did not succeed.
0 tempora! O mores! Such are the broadening effects of travel and two short months in the Orient. Conceive of the old maid schoolteacher in America assuming the position of judge in a matrimonial—or extra-matrimonial—scandal of this sort.
I promised justice to the sniffling Pedro, and told him to call for it next day at ten A.M. Like me, he supposed it would take the form of Tikkia. But when I reached home and summoned the culprits before the bar of a “moral middle class,” they were not disconcerted in the least. Romoldo stood upon high moral ground. Tikkia might or might not be married. It was nothing to him, and he did not know. She was an orphan of his acquaintance to whom he wished to do a kindness. Tikkia promptly drew up her skirt over the unexposed knee and showed a filthy sore which she said was caused by Pedro’s playful habit of dragging her about on stony ground by the hair. Moreover she stood upon her legal rights. She was not matrimonio en iglesia, and she had a right to leave Pedro when she chose.
Pedro came next day at ten A.M., but he did not get justice. On the contrary, justice, as embodied in Tikkia, stood at the head of the stairs and said, “No quiero” as often as I (and Pedro) turned our imploring eyes upon her.
Things went on in this way for some time, and my perplexities offered amusement to my friends. I felt sure that Romoldo and Tikkia were lying, and at one time I resolved to discharge them both. The young American teacher who had been in the Islands since the beginning of our occupation gave me some sound advice. He said: “What on earth are these people’s morals to you? Romoldo is a good servant. He speaks Spanish, and if you let him go for one who speaks only Visayan, your own housekeeping difficulties will be greatly increased.” Then I pleaded the old-fashioned rural American fear that people might think the worse of me for keeping such a pair in my employ; and Mr. S—— simply collapsed. He sat and laughed in my face till I laughed too. “We are not in America now,” was his parting remark; and I am still learning what a variety of moral degeneration that sentence was created to excuse.
I have already given more space than is warranted by good taste to the romance of Tikkia and Romoldo. The affair went on till I began to fear lest Pedro, in one of the attacks of jealousy to which Filipinos are subject, should take vengeance and a bolo in his own hands. Fortunately, at the critical moment, Romoldo and Tikkia fell out. She kicked his guitar off the back porch and he complained that she neglected her work. Then she asked leave to return to her own town for a few days, and the request was joyfully granted. Pedro also obtained a vacation. Their town was round the corner one block away, and there they retired. They greeted me pleasantly whenever I passed by, and Tikkia seemed in no wise embarrassed by her change of front.
If I have described this incident in full, it is because it illustrates so perfectly the attitude of a large portion of the Filipino people on marriage. The common people seldom marry except, as we would term it, by the common-law marriage. When they do marry in church, it is quite as much for the éclat of the function as for conscientious reasons. Marriage in the church costs usually eight pesos (four dollars gold), though cheaper on Sundays, and to achieve it is quite a mark of financial prosperity.
Of course, among the educated classes our own view of marriage prevails, though I have heard of instances where the common-law form was still observed. In some towns it is customary for marriages to take place but once a year; an American told me of descending on a mountain town where the annual wedding festival was due, and of finding fifty-two happy couples in their gala attire wending a decorous procession toward the church.