A frumpy, bronze skinned slightly smelly muscular woman with an eternal surprised look on her face. Her hair-- parted in the middle and tightly braided in two shiny plaited loops then tucked behind her head-- was black as midnight and slick as snake skin. Her lips-- also black, are always tightly closed as if she was biting into something. Her liquid eyes, black as the darkest shadow, was as sharp as a that of a hawk.
I knew her as Tinay. She was Dada's labandera.
Tinay would sit on a small block of wood-- her personal bangko, and with knees bent and thighs pressing against her calves she would preside over a tub of overflowing white suds right next to the hand cranked water pump at the back of Dada's house.
Tinay was partial to unfiltered Bataan Matamis cigarettes, which she smoked with the lighted end inside her mouth. She could make smoke come out in a stream from the exposed unlighted end to shoo away a fly. She could also make the smoke flow out of her nostrils, stream up her face and make it appear that the smoke was coming out of her hair. She would only take a break to light up another cigarette. Sometimes she'd take out a cigarette-- which somehow had gone out, from her mouth to re-light it; and sometimes she'd just blow on it and it magically would light up again. On rare occasions, she'd take out the cigarette to spit out ash which had dropped on her mouth, but she would quickly pop in the cigarette back and smoke it until it disappeared onto the tip of her tongue.
By late afternoon, Tinay would be ironing clothes while she listened to Oras ng Ligaya on the AM radio; and just before the resident tuko could conclude its daily recitative, she’d be done and having an early dinner, eating with her fingers. I would watch her sometimes and if I get too near her, she'd shove a handful of rice into my mouth, too. It always tasted good.
Tinay is the fire breathing dragon of my childhood.
Mabuhay ka, Tinay.
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