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Maid in the Philippines
Maid in the Philippines
‘I"m dreaming of a maid who can not only clean and dust, but who can also be trained to cook well, drive me to the airport when I have out-of-town trips, take phone messages efficiently, pay my bills for me, and preferably knows kung-fu.’
By Clinton Palanca

One of the more detestable customs of ill-bred society matrons in the Philippines, as far as I am concerned, is their habit of continually grousing about their maids. It seems, sometimes, that their afternoon merienda sessions are congregated expressly for this purpose: there"s a little desultory chatter about movie stars, about whom they ran into at the Highlands club last weekend, about the sorry state of the Blahnik outlet in this country; and then, with a fiery gleam in her eye, one of them hisses: “Do you know what Inday did last night?” They can go on like this for hours, and they do; and in a perverse way, they"re having fun. They trump each other with tales of incredible stupidity and stubbornness, of ornaments and appliances broken, with miniature set-piece dramas of confrontation and dismissal.

I"m ambivalent about maids myself. Like everyone else, I like having things done for me: not just the more obvious tasks like clearing the table or putting books back on the shelves, but the general chores that one takes for granted when living in a well-run household, such as vacuuming the carpets and washing the laundry.

Like many persons my age who claim to live alone, I actually live with semi-autonomy, with an umbilical cord (a more cynical individual might say a catheter) connecting me to my family"s household : clothes are sent back to the main house to be laundered, and miraculously appear clean and ironed in my closet; and once a week, one of the maids comes over and does the more onerous tasks, such as scrubbing slime from the grout between the sink and the wall. I polish my own silver, shine my shoes, and scrub my beloved copper pots, and when I have gone through every piece in my eight-person dinner set, I actually do sigh, roll up my sleeves, and set to work on the pyramid of encrusted dishes in the sink.

Since I don"t have maids myself, I tend to get startled or annoyed on the occasions when I encounter those of other people. Maids, I believe, have a strange and unhealthy relationship with the telephone. Not only are they always polishing it with alcohol, so that it can be used as an additional implement in the operating-room, but they jump when it rings, and they pick it up as though it were alive.

“May I talk to Bebot?”

“Ay, wala.(Oh...not here)”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Ewan. (Dunno)”

“Would you know what time he"ll be back?”

“Malay ko. Tawag ka nalang ulit. (I wouldn’t know. Call back later)”

“Would you have a cellphone number where I can reach him?”

“Sandali.(Hold on)”

Long, long silence. Dogs barking in the background. Rustling noises. In the distance: “Ate, alam mo ba... (Ma’m, would you know...)”

More silence. Finally: “Wala. Hindi namin alam. (Nope. We don’t know)”

Then they hang up without saying good-bye. It turns out that he"s in Indonesia, and won"t be back for a month.

No pity-piety here about their just being uneducated, how unfortunate it all is, etc.; you"ve been through it, and it"s annoying. Second-top gripe about other people"s maids: the ones who won"t cage or even hold back a dog that is obviously unfriendly ("Hindi naman "yun nangangagat, eh. He really doesn’t bite)" while the Doberman snarls, displaying blood-stained fangs, and haunched up and ready to spring).

Some things I"ll never get used to, though; for instance, I detest with a vicious passion the idea of tinkling a little bell for a serving-maid in the next room and have her appear in Pavlovian fashion to pass the vegetables; or having a maid stoop over me while I am sleeping in order to wake me; or standing behind you at a lunch table waving a stick with cut-up bits of plastic twine on it to shoo away flies. These are things that rich people or people who grew up rich no doubt have become accustomed to; but why would you want to accustom yourself to that? There"s nothing worse than the vulgarity of psuedo-refinement.

Besides, I"ve seen how my behavior turns ugly with maids: I throw tantrums when they don"t come when called, when they let sterling silver implements fall into the garbage-disposal unit while it"s churning, when they say “some girl” called, but can"t remember her name. See? It"s so easy, and so much fun, to bitch about the help. The only solution, I think, is to put them in a situation where they aren"t slaves with token wages, but employees with set tasks.

All this has come up, of course, because I"m thinking of getting a maid. The impetus for this is not just that I"m getting lazier in my old age, but because I"ve been having wonderful home-cooked meals lately.

Suzette Montinola has turned her ancestral 1920s mansion into a venue for small gatherings, put the old family retainer chef into kitchen whites and chequered pants, and serves family recipes with great style. We had leek-and-potato soup, baked fish, gambas, roast pork with candied vegetables, ubod salad, and a divine bread-and-butter pudding that runs (on squat little legs) through my dreams at night.

It was all served on antique china, by a staff that knew how to serve without being cringing and over-deferential nor excessively familiar. At Jonjon Rufino"s weekend house in Tagaytay, the staff turned out comfort Pinoy food, which I fell on as though I hadn"t had it for months (which is true); and the maids actually looked happy and well-groomed.

But what is the wisdom of getting a maid in a small apartment, and how does one avoid placing oneself in a master-slave relationship? One of my friends tells of an apartment in his building that is staffed entirely by midgets, which I suppose solves the problem of limited space. Another friend is completely intimidated by his maid who joins him on the couch when he"s watching television, and harangues him about his girlfriend (he reciprocates by silently farting in her direction). Yet another talks of coming home with guests and finding the maid cooking naked in the kitchen, having thrown off her clothes because it was too hot (at least, that"s his explanation).

I"m dreaming of a maid who can not only clean and dust, but who can also be trained to cook well, drive me to the airport when I have out-of-town trips, take phone messages efficiently, pay my bills for me, and preferably knows kung-fu.

I realize that for many Filipino men, these are tasks which are the domain of one"s wife; hopefully, enough disposable income and an enlightened nature will enable my wife (at the moment phantasmagorical, essence without esse) to relinquish these tasks and concentrate on more wifely things, such as discussing Kant and Schopenhauer or running for public office.

And hopefully never, ever going to a maid-bitching merienda session.

Clinton Palanca was educated at the Ateneo de Manila University, with a degree in Literature and Philosophy. He has published two books, one of which contains the Palanca-award winning short story“The Apartment.” He owns and manages two restaurants.