Patricia of the Green Hills Powerpoint

1. PATRICIA OF THE GREEN HILLS
by Maximo D. Ramos

3. When my friend Jose Lactaotao lost his
Muslim wife and his two sons in the malaria
epidemic that devastated the Maguindanao delta
years ago, he left his teaching job and returned to
Luzon, at the same time passing on to my wife a
Tirurai orphan girl whom his father-in-law had
presented him with on his wedding day.

4. My wife, with a rare stroke of genius called
the girl Patricia, a name that suited her well. The
unimaginative Lactaotao 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.

5. It was in the clearing that Patricia's
parents had been murdered by bandits one
evening. Patricia herself escaped only because
her father had shoved her through a hole in the
floor during the attack and she had quietly
slipped into the underbrush. Thus, only nine,
the girl had been left alone in the world, and
Jose Lactaotao's father-in-law, something of a
deputy governor in those remote regions, had
brought the little orphan to town.

6. Lactaotao's wife had taught Patricia practically
nothing about cooking especially cooking dishes in
which pork was usedNow that Patricia was with us,
however, she was taught home economics in the house
as well as at school. And she learned so fast 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 preferred the simple dried meat Patricia knew so
well how to broil over wood coals, the fat dripping
intothe embers and curling up in sweet- smelling
smoke.

7. Every two weeks or so during the year,
except perhaps at planting time, it was the
practice of a Tirurai youth to come into town
peddling 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 peddling the
meat in baskets he had woven out of rattan and
bamboo strips.

8. For all his good looks, however, he wore a
sour expression on his face, and he never
became intimate with anyone in our town. He
would arrive early in the morning, and 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.

9. In the meantime, Patricia also learned how
to operate the sewing machine my wife
enthusiastically bought for her. She took
instructions from a neighbor who was by way of
being a modiste, for my wife does not know the
difference between a baste and a hem; and
before long, Patricia was making shirts and
underwear. I have little doubt that if there had
been children in the house, she would have
learned to be good at caring for them, too.

10. 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 high school. 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
high school was located.

11. But on the morning, we were to start,
Patricia burst out wailing. This development did
not come as quite a surprise to me. For Patricia
had a peculiar habit she could not break-that of
occasionally playing truant with some of the
Muslim girls. On certain unexpected afternoons,
directly after school was out, she would slip
away and climb the hill paths with three or four
of the native girls to the villages beyond the line
of trees outer hills. Patricia would spend the
night in the house of one of her companions.

12. Shame facedly she would return early the
next day with the girls, when her companions
were gone, my wife would give her a scolding.
She would weep in contrition and write out a
promise not to do the like again. The new
promissory slip would be laid away with the
previous ones. For a month or two, nothing
would happen, and we would sigh gratefully
saying that Patricia had learned the impropriety
of running away to the hills. And the, next thing
we knew, she had fled to the hills again.

13. Finally, bowed and weeping, she came to my
wife one night and asked to return back her
promises because she can’t keep them up. After
that, we just hoped that she went to the hills with
only the more trustworthy girls. And whenever we
ourselves found time to take a walk beyond the
limits of the town, we would take her along. She
would have a great time then, chasing butterflies
and picking wild fruits and flowers. She would
climb to the top branch of a tree as far as the limbs
could bear her weight, and she would yodel in
complete abandon.

14. The walks helped a great deal, however,
my wife and I often wished that we had more
time of our own to take Patricia out, for with
the passing of the months she grew more
restive. In the evenings, after thumbing
through the magazines in her room or perhaps
doing a little of sewing she took in for a
modest fee, she would turn off the light and
look out of the window. Or she would walk out
to the steps on the back porch and gaze at the
hills far to the east of our delta.

15. Our home was not far from the river. On
the river's farther bank lay beds of reed so thick
you could not have known that rails and snipes
skulked in them till our ears heard their dreamy
pipings at dawn. Patricia would lie down on the
graveled bank and feel the wind from the hills
brush her face. Or she would poke about in the
reeds and flush the wading birds.

16. The meat the Tirurai hunter peddled was
so good that I asked Patricia to watch for him
and buy several kilos of it when he should come
into town again. She usually got the best portion
of the man's wares, and at slightly reduced
price, too. And no wonder, my wife told me, for
of course Patricia could talk to him in their
native Tirurai, and that naturally made a big
difference.

17. Then something happened. One day when
we came home for lunch, the maid followed us
into our room in a nervous flurry. That morning,
having done her washing earlier than usual, she
had returned from the river and found "the wild
man" so she told us, standing in the front yard
for no apparent reason. Looking up, however,
she had seen Patricia half concealed behind the
screen of vines on the porch, and the two were
talking so earnestly with each other that neither
of them saw her.

18. In fear, that he would catch her spying on
them "and tear me to pieces and make dried meat
of me," she cleared her throat. The man turned his
sour face to her and Patricia withdrew into the
house. Then, scowling savagely but saying not a
word, the man had left.
After supper, my wife called Patricia aside and tried
to reason with her. Was her friendship with the
hunter a serious manner? If she returned to those
barbaric hills, what would become of her talent, her
looks? What was the use of her having finished her
education in the town school and having been
brought up in civilization if she would only return to
her hills after all?

19. The man did not return to the town for some
months after that, perhaps, my wife hoped, because
he had realized his error in trying to win so fine a girl
as Patricia; perhaps, I feared, because it was the
rainy time of the year again and the seed had to be
sown in his clearing.
When the August rain were over the new crop we
knew was well along, the Tirurai hunter came back.
He had grown more bronzed and muscular. He
clearly had been working harder than ever. His
clothes appeared somewhat neater, too, though as
usual, they were innocent of starch and iron. He
made two trips to town that week.

20. We woke up later the following Saturday
morning, after a week full of the paper work
that is the death of us teachers, to find Patricia
gone. We waited for her all the next day. We
waited for her all the next week.
But the green hills were far away.

21. THE END
Group 6
Prepared by: Alyssa KhateA. Mabbayad bspt-3
Franceslyn JenetteF. Micu BST-2