A Woman's Impression of the Philippines

by Mary H. Fee

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.