I once went on a silly diet because none of my clothes would fit. It turned out, the maid discovered a convenient way of non-ironing: She simply stuck everything in the dryer. Add to that horror, our Meralco bill went up an additional P10,000. Maids are the necessary evil. You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them. They are part of the reason I’d rather be here than in New York where I had a cleaning lady only once a week. Before Juling came into my life, I collected 30 pairs of underwear so I could do the laundry once a month. I also X-dealt with an Indian classmate: I taught her draping, she cleaned my toilet. In Manila, I can come home daily to clean white sheets and towels, spotless sinks and toilets. I can throw a party and make a mess, and after 30 minutes, have the place look as if nothing happened.
I can brush my teeth without worry that hardened toothpaste will get stuck in the sink. I can ask someone to scoop me an ice cream cone while I write this story. A cook can make me crispy pata at 9 p.m. I don’t have to drag my tired carcass to the bus station because I have a driver! Thank God also for yayas. Lord knows I couldn’t raise my boys without them. My friend in Manhattan pays $900 a week for a Filipino nanny to watch her baby, Monday to Friday from 8 to 6. Do the math. That freaking yaya earns more than most of us! We may earn crap and dwell in this crazy, traffic-jammed place called Metro Manila, but as my dad would say, we live like kings. This column is dedicated to funny stories about the chimminy cricket, the chimminy aa, the tongkaluts, the mimay, the mimmy rogers, the mimmy anecdote – in other words, the househelp that make our third-world lives bearable.
"Annalie!" I yelled out. "Why are you eating that?"
"Ma’am, nasusuka po ako."
"Bakit?" I was concerned. I thought she might have her migraine again. Because, she said, she tasted my breastmilk from Baby Markus’s bottle and it was yucky. Why, thank you. An hour later she came up and said the breastmilk tasted "malansa" and wondered why Markus liked it so much. Could it be that because Markus had been taking just that for six months, he had gotten used to it?
Ben was sitting on his yaya’s lap and was transfixed by Eddie Murphy in Daddy Daycare, his favorite movie. He was ignoring my pleas for hugs and kisses.
I lay down in bed and started to tickle his foot. No reaction. I was wondering why my son’s foot seemed unusually hard.
I was tickling the yaya’s feet.
"Hillo?" the maid answers the phone.
"Kanino yan?" my uncle inquires.
"Kay RJ po."
My uncle informs RJ through the intercom, then tells the maid, "Pag sagot ni RJ, ibaba mo yung telefono."
After a while…
"Ungh. Ungh," my uncle heard the maid grunting.
"Sir, hindi ko po mababa yung telefono. Nakatali po," the maid said, trying to yank the phone off the wall.
"Ayusin mo yung grocery," the friend told his maid before leaving the room.
When he came back, the bulanglang was in a vase, in an elaborate flower arrangement.
"Wow, ang ganda mo naman," Claire says. "Naka-Esprit!"
"Hindi po ma’am," the maid says stroking her hair. "Naka-jil."
"Ma’am kakain po kayo?" the cook asked me just the other day.
"Anong meron?"
"Shrimp sinigang, gusto niyo?"
"Sige."
"Ma’am babalatan na?"
"Sige."
While most people peel shrimps and leave out the tail, our brilliant cook peeled everything and left the skull! (She peeled the outer shell of the head, but left the insides, including eyes, intact.)
Unbelievable. I had mutated shrimp sinigang with skeletal heads. I couldn’t finish it. Too bad because it tasted good. (This is the same cook who puts everything in the refrigerator, including potato chips.)
In the early ’80s, a former classmate’s father owned the most modern and largest film-processing laboratory in Manila. Magnatech Omni was where movies were dubbed, edited, scored, etc.
They also produced a Nora Aunor movie. So one night, they had Nora Aunor over for dinner at home. The maids were of course star-struck and excited.
Our classmate’s mom asked the maid to serve drinks with a napkin around the glass. Lo and behold, the maid came out of the kitchen with sanitary napkins wrapped around every glass!
A British woman asked her Filipino maid to "draw the curtains every 5 p.m." After one week, she would still come home to a dark apartment and decided to complain.
"I told you to draw the curtains at 5 p.m. Why haven’t you done so?" she asked.
"But ma’am, look," the maid said, bringing out a stack of papers where she had indeed drawn – as in sketched – the curtains.
"O, nakahanda na yung hamon, kulang na lang, pako" (apparently, the Filipino term for cloves). She didn’t say "cloves" because the cook might not understand.
"Lagyan mo ng 12 na pako, tapos i-bake mo na," my Tita said.
After a while, the cook came back with eight rusty – as in carpenter’s – nails, saying, "Ma’am, papano po yan, walo pa lang ang nahanap kong pako?"
Another time, her mom brought live talangka from the market and asked the same maid to boil it for Sunday lunch. The family then left for Mass.
When they came back, the house was crawling with crabs.
The maid forgot to cover the pot.
The maid brought out the lechon with an apple in her mouth.
"’Day, next time, pag may hiningi ako sa ‘yo, i-serve mo sa plato," she told the maid.
The following day the mom asked for her chinelas, which the maid brought on a plate.
The maid followed and brought everything, including the spare tire and jack.