Why Women Washes the Dishes
Filomena Navarro Colendrino
Have you ever wondered why women always wash the
dishes? It’s because of this story:
In the town of Santa Rosa there once lived a couple named
Hugo and Imelda. Every mealtime they quarreled over the
chore of washing the dishes. Imelda would scold Hugo if he
refused to wash the dishes. Sometimes she would become
angry and call him names, and if he talked back she would
get coconut midrib broom and chase him with it. He would
run to the house of his compadre and hide there till his
wife’s anger had passed.
The neighbors familiarly called Imelda, Ka Maldang and
Hugo, Ka Ugong.
One day just as they were finishing their lunch, Ka Ugong
announced: “I’m not going to wash the dishes anymore.” He
threw out his chest and lifted his chin.
“Who says so?” asked Ka Maldang, holding up her chin,
higher than his.
“I say so; I worked so hard in the field this morning. I’m not
going to wash any dish.”
Ka Maldang stood up and with her arms akimbo, she glared
down at Ka Ugong across the table. She was at Ka Ugong
across the table. She was a Big woman. Her arms were
stout. Her voice was also big. “And who, Mister Hugo, is
going to wash these dishes?” she asked.
Ka Ugong’s chest sank again. His chin also went down. He
held on the edge of the table nervously.
“You!” he said in a much lower tone. “You are the woman.
You should do all the housework.”
“And what do you do?” asked Ka Maldang. “You tie the
carabao to the reeds in the field and then you lie down on
the grass to watch it graze. You call that hard work? I cook,
clean the house, wash your clothes, I scrub the floor, I do all
the work that only slaves should do. And yet, you even
refuse to help me wash the plate which you have eaten!” Ka
Maldang’s voice was now raised to a high pitch and her
tears posed on her eyelids at Ka Ugong and at her broom.
She grabbed the broom. She raised the broom to strike him,
crying, “You, you, you lazy man!”
Ka Ugong ducked under the table, “Don’t” he cried. “Don’t
strike me!”
“Come out from under the table, you coward,” ordered Ka
Maldang.
“Lay down your broom,” said Ka Ugong.
“All right, all right. Come out,” Ka Maldang put her broom
behind the door.
Ka Ugong returned to his seat opposite her at the table.
“What have you to say?” asked Ka Maldang, wiping her
eyes.
“Let’s stop quarreling over the plates. Let’s have a wager.
The first one of us who will speak after I’d said ‘Begin’ will
wash the dishes. Always”
“Only that?” said Ka Maldang. “The first one who talks will
always wash the plates, and bowls, and pots and pans.
Always.”
“Right.” said Ka Ugong. “If you ever say just one word to me
or to anybody, or to anything after I had said ‘Begin’, you
will always wash the dishes.”
“That’s easy. I can keep my mouth shut even for a week.
You can’t. You even talk to your carabao.”
“All right! Are you ready?” asked Ka Ugong.
Ka Maldang sat upright in front of him across the table. She
nodded her head, compressed her lips, and Ka Ugong said
“Begin.”
They both fell silent. They sat at the table looking at each
other across the unwashed plates and bowls and spoons.
They did not like to leave each other for fear that one would
talk to himself without the other’s hearing. They sat there
just staring.
Soon the cat began to meow for its food. Neither Ka
Maldang nor Ka Ugong paid attention to its mewing. The cat
jumped upon the drying dishes to lick the leftovers. Ka
Maldang did not drive the cat away. Neither did Ka Ugong.
The cat licked the pot and pan on it, overturned a kettle,
spilled its contents, then went to lie down under the table.
Ka Ugong pretended that nothing had happened. He
continued to sit still, and so did Ka Maldang.
Soon, it was getting late in the afternoon, but they went on
sitting mutely at the lunch table. Their eyes were tired from
staring hard at each other. Tears began to roll down their
cheeks. Ka Ugong’s shirt became damp with his sweat. Ka
Maldang’s sweat gathered on her fore heat, and trickled
down to the sides of her face, and fell drop by drop to her
breast.
A neighbor called, “Compadre Ugong! Oh! Compadre!”
Ka Ugong did not answer.
The neighbor called again, “Comadre Maldang! Yoo-hoo
Comadre Maldang. Yoo-hoo, Compadre Ugong, may I
borrow your ax?”
Ka Maldang did not answer. Ka Ugong looked at her silently.
“Perhaps nobody is at home,” they heard the neighbor say
to himself. “But why did they leave their ladder at the door?
They usually remove the ladder when they go away. Well,
I’ll just go up get the ax and return it later.” The neighbor
went up.
When the neighbor went up the bamboo ladder, he was
surprised to see Ka Maldang and Ka Ugong sitting silently at
the table where the plates had dried up with the leftovers.
He hurried toward them.
Ka Ugong neither moved nor talked. The neighbor repeated
his question. He shook Ka Ugong’s shoulder. Ka Ugong let
him shake him, closing his lips tighter.
The neighbor turned to Ka Maldang. “Speak, Comadre!
What happened?” He shook her shoulders, too.
She pushed him roughly aside but did not speak.
“Did you eat something poisonous? Some food that has
made you dumb?” He shook each one alternately. But still
neither stood up nor talked.
The neighbor was alarmed. He did not get the ax but ran
out to the rest of the neighbors. He told them that
something terrible had happened to his Compadre Ugong
and Compadre Maldang. The neighbors gathered at Ka
Maldang’s dining room. They took turns trying to make
them speak. But the two continued to sit staring at each
other in silence. Ka Maldang looked at her husband
threateningly for a moment then closed her eyes. Ka Ugong
knew that she did so to avoid looking at the neighbors. He
also closed his eyes and ignored everyone who had come up
to his house. Ka Maldang was very angry with her
Compadre’s interference, but she dared not speak her
mind; she pretended to be asleep.
The compadre was very much worried. He ran to the village
herb man. The herb man came and when he saw the
motionless, silent husband and wife sitting at the table, he
declared that they were bewitched. He spread a woven bud
mat in the center of the sala and asked the “bewitched”
couple to lie down. Ka Ugong obediently lay down and
closed his eyes. He curled up and went to sleep. But Ka
Maldang refused to get up from where she sat at the dining
table.
The herb man said, “Ah, the spirit that has taken possession
of her is very stubborn. I must break its spell.”
He turned, then produced from a small bag which he always
carried nine pieces of betel leaf, a piece of areca nut, and a
little lime from a tiny bottle. He examined the leaves closely
to choose those which had veins running in identical
arrangements on each side of the midrib. He cut the nut
into nine pieces. He spread a little lime on each betel leaf,
rolled them and wrapped them around each piece of areca
nut. He now had nine rings of the leaves.
“This represents the lost spirit of the couple,” he said.
He chewed the leaf and nut. When he had chewed it, he
spat it on his palm, dipped a forefinger of the other hand
into the nut colored saliva and marked with it a cross on the
foreheads of Ka Ugong and Ka Maldang. Ka Ugong did not
seem to feel the old man’s finger on his forehead. Ka
Maldang caught the man’s forefinger and twisted it. The old
herb doctor cried “aray” and pulled back his hand. He
moved toward Ka Ugong who was lying down. Calling his
name softly and slowly several times. “Come, Ugong, Come
back, Ugong!” Ka Ugong did not move nor speak.
“Come Maldang! Come home to your body now! Come
Maldang!” chanted the old man. Ka Maldang did not
answer.
Evening fell on the frightened village, frightened because
the herb doctor said that the spell might be cast on some
other villagers besides Ka Ugong and Ka Maldang. He called
to the bewitched couple softly at first, and then louder, but
became tired so she reclined against the bamboo wall.
The older man said, “This is the first witchery of its kind that
I have met here. By their silence I believe that they are
dead. Their spirits, driven away by the witch, have left their
bodies. The only thing to do to keep their souls in peace and
to prevent this witchery craft from spreading among us is to
bury them.”
The herb man ordered some of the men to look for boards
and make two coffins immediately before the malady would
go to them. In no time, the two coffins, made of rough
planks, hurriedly nailed together, were finished.
The women began to weep for Ka Maldang. She had leaned
rigidly against the back of her chair, closed her eyes, and
shut her lips tight. The herb man asked the men gathered
around to lift the couple into the coffins.
“We shall bury them at sunrise. Some of us have to stay to
keep the wake for the dead,” he said.
The man easily lifted Ka Ugong and placed him inside his
coffin. Surely, he thought to himself, he would win the
wager. He would not be afraid of being buried. Why, he
would just get cut of the grave when the neighbors were
gone. He thought everything going on was great fun and he
was enjoying himself. How he would frighten them all when
he returned from his grave!
The herb man approached Ka Maldang. Although her eyes
were closed, she had been listening to his directions. She
was afraid that he would surely force her into the coffin if
she did not tell him to go away. But she did not want to talk.
She hoped her husband would object to the men’s lifting
her into the coffin.
“Surely, Hugo will not let me be buried tomorrow. Uh, I’m
afraid to sleep in that coffin tonight. No, I’ll not let them lift
me into it,” she thought to herself.
But she did not hear Ka Ugong speak. She opened her eyes
just as the herb man, aided by two other men, put his arms
around her to lift up from her chair.
Ka Maldang pushed the men, got up to her feet, and
shouted, “Don’t touch us! Get out! Get out of my house.
Shame on you for coming here, meddling with our lives!”
Ka Ugong leaped to his feet. He also shouted, “You talked
first!”
He jumped about clapping his hands and saying to the
astonished neighbors, “She talked first. We had a wager.
Now she will always wash the dishes!’
Ka Maldang lifted up the lid of Ka Ugong’s coffin to strike his
head with it, but he ran out with his neighbors, still shouting
happily and saying “I won, I knew I would win! Now I’ll
never wash dishes again.”