When my friend Jose lost his Muslim wife ang his two sons in the malaria epidemic that devastated the Maguindanao delta yearsago, he left his teaching job and returned to Luzon, at the same time passing on to my wife a Tirurai orphan girlwhom his father in law had presenred him with on his wedding day.
My wife, with a rare stroke of genious called the girl Patricia, a name that suited her well. The unimaginated Lactatotao had named her Marcosa, though when she was baptized in the Protestant chapel, the American missionary had given her the name Mary Cruz. Much fairer than the average daughter of our town. Patricia was slender , graceful and sensitive of face traits which characterized the Indonesian stock from which she came. A bright sparkle was in her eyes and a striking sprightliness was in her gait.
She was fourteen then, and it had been five years since she left her native green hills far to the east of our town. Her ancestors had been tillers of a small clearing at the age of the jungle, and having been plain pagan with tge one of the Muslim's version to fork, they had for centuries, hundted the wild boar as well as the deer.
It was in the clearing that Patricia's parent had been murdered by bandits one evening. Patricia herself scaped only because her father had shoved her through a hole in the floor during the attack and she had quietly slipped in the underbrush. Thus, only nine, the girl had been left alone in the word, and Jose Lactaotao's father in law, something of a deputy governor in those remote regions, had brought the little orphan to town.
Lactatotao's wife had taught Patricia practically nothing about cookingespecially cooking dishes in which pork was used. For although Mrs. Lactaotao's had been Christianized, she had never lived down her bias against pork. Now that Patricia was with us, however, she was taught that before school was out that year, she was concocting exotic smelling dishes my wife prided herself on; though since I was what my wife calls a barbarian with jungle tastes, I still preffered the simple dried meat Patricia knew so well how to broil over wood coals, the fat dripping into the embers and curling up sweef- smeeling smoke.
Every two weeks or so during the year, except perhaps at planting time, it was the practice of a Tirurai youth to come into townpeddling salted wild boar meat and venison. A typical Indonesian, he was tall and hairy of limb and chest. He was sunburned to a dark brown, and he had muscles that wriggled like snakes caged inside his skin as he walked strios. For all his good looks, however, he wore a sour expression on his face. And he never became intimate with anyone and or town. He would arrive early in the morning, in the following afternoon. Having done his trading with the lowlanders, he would follow the winding paths back to his distant hills. It was the meat peddled by this Tirurai youth which, broiled by Patricia as I said I found exceedingly good. In the meantime, Patricia also learned how to operate the sewing machine my wife enthusiastically bough for her. She took instructions from a neighbor who was by way of being modiste, from my wife does not know the different between a baste and a hem; and before long, Patricia was making shirt and underwear. I have little doubt that if there had beenchildren in the house, she would have learned to be good at caring for them, too.
She graduated from the elementary school second in a class of fifteen while other natives of the region were spending as many as ten years in the first four grades. In June, Patricia was going to highschool. Her new dresses were made, we borrowed Elena's old First year books, and the three of us were ready to make the long trip by river launch to the provincial capital, where the highschool was located.
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