Queen Uncaptured by Bishop

Often, I saw two men playing chess in the early afternoons under the overhang of store fronts on Magsaysay Avenue in Iba on Luzon. Today, they sat outside the barber shop, just across from my landlord’s business, Ebalo Printing Press, where I’d dropped my monthly rent. As I left the press, I strolled over to watch the chess game. An intermittent cool breeze blew, but the men—one young and one older—were wise to be sitting in the shade. The Philippine sun was hot. The younger player was warm and handsome with chestnut skin, while the elder, mid-sixties, I guessed, was less so. 

The board and pieces on the small table were well-used. Some of the brown and white chessmen had dull edges, smoothed with wear, and the board’s leather corners had softened.

The men looked up, and the young one stood and asked me to take his seat.

“No thank you.” Was his challenger wearing him down?

The elder asked, “Do you want to play?”

“Yes, but not now. I’ve an appointment.” Due at a mountain village water system project, I’d hail a tricycle and leave town in minutes.

He stared at me with intent and at length, but I didn’t understand what the look meant. Perhaps, my being foreign explained it. Filipinos commonly stared at those who looked different, probably a human practice.

“My opponent’s a master,” the younger man said, which was followed by the elder’s comment that he was the pastor at Iba’s Church of Christ. I barely knew his church from the Muslim mosque that was going up.

“May we play sometime?” I said, despite little experience. Would he have the patience for an amateur?

“Yes.” He raised his eyebrows in what looked like evaluation.

I didn’t see the pastor for weeks and came across him in the vast public market on the south end of Magsaysay, amid a busy lunch-time crowd. Once, the entire market was housed inside the roof, but the fringes kept spilling out farther as the population increased and more merchants wanted stall space. Vendors sold a wide variety of products beyond food: clothing, toys, shoes, housewares, new and black-market CDs, and more. Colorful, loud, cramped, I tried to avoid its late-afternoon rush hour, but this place had an appeal. It throbbed with all of life’s richness and mess.

I stopped on the outer ring of the market to buy produce first. Eying the vivid green beans, I bought some and chatted with the merchant. Her black hair, supported by a thick bright yellow ribbon, charmed her face. Nodding goodbye, I turned as the pastor approached me from behind.

“You haven’t come back to play chess,” he said, all business.

“I’ve had no free time. A water project and business start-up talks keep me running.” He knew I was a foreign worker with the islands’ Department of Trade and Industry. I’d been in town four months, the only white woman among 35,000 residents.

“I really wanted to talk to you about being saved.”

Startled, my body stiffened as I eyed him with skepticism.

We stood at the corner of two busy cross aisles, and he backed up into a less-crowded one for more space, indicating I move too. I didn’t.

“Do you believe you’ve been saved?” he asked in a heightened tone.

That’s why he’d stared at me so long when I spoke to him the first time. From his perspective, an American woman, or maybe any foreign woman needed reform. A friend’s irritated voice flashed through memory, “Ignore the priests.” Another man who was afraid of women.

He asked me again. Arrogance and malice left his tongue in a slow, casual way.

Glancing right, the merchant served another customer, but she’d heard his every word.

“Yes.”

He asked again, as if he didn’t like the answer, and I responded, “Do you think you’re saved?”

“Oh yes, of course.” He lifted his closed lips up in a half smile, his eyes filled with self-satisfaction, implying, how could you doubt it?

“I’m as sure as you are that I am.”

I didn’t know if he was searching for souls or thought me too bold to approach and greet two men playing chess in a public place. What a strange conversation to be having in a market.

“My work comes first, so chess with you will be delayed, and I don’t need help changing myself. Good day.”

I never wanted to lay eyes on him again, and turned, continuing down a stall or two in the aisle, focusing on the colorful food displays: carrots, eggplant and mangos, jackfruit, pomegranates, lettuces, bananas and melons, onions and tomatoes and oranges. The variety and plenty seemed endless, but my thoughts still held his unpleasant face.

Sexism ran high in the Philippines and patriarchy was numbing in its pervasiveness.

More than a handful of men I’d met here—colleagues, business owners, neighbors—held preconceptions of American women as sexually wanton.

I focused instead on the produce, the breeze-blown palm fronds, the soft blue sky. Nectarine fragrance sailed under my nose and pushed against my dark feelings. I bought four and slid them into my cloth satchel slung over one shoulder.

Other women colleagues had told me of their experiences. One young worker with an MA in psychology and engaged with women’s groups, north of Iba on Luzon, was frustrated when any man started running with her, uninvited, as she exercised. She didn’t care a wit about a training directive that we should never express criticism to a Filipino directly. She wanted to trip any man who bothered her. Fair enough. He was infringing on her preference to run alone.

Another incident occurred at a business meeting where we planned to discuss specific ideas among a good turnout of 30 hotel and restaurant owners, including some of my clients. Before adjourning, the chair, Ben Farin, early 50s, asked me if I was interested in meeting some men. Taken aback that such a question was said aloud in front of a roomful of people, many of whom I didn’t know, I replied no. Then a woman I knew piped up from across the room and asked me the same question twice more. The chair had set me up and she was following his directive. She saw the glint in my eye and stopped. Ben didn’t like my independence. The culture was invested in women being part of a couple so they could be controlled. He presumed he could direct the situation in a public forum.

After the meeting, as I waited on the curb for my ride, someone approached and stopped several feet behind me. 

“Hindi, hindi, hindi,” he said, speaking louder, irritated.

Hindi is no in Tagalog, my answer to his invasive question. I turned to see who was speaking. It was Ben, now hard-eyed. Frowning at him for his sexist misdeeds and surprised he’d carry his frustration outside, I entered the car. Days later, I spoke to him in private and called him on unprofessional behavior. He demurred, amused, and claimed it was a misunderstanding. We knew that was a lie.

Days later at lunch, I was with three of my DTI colleagues and we discussed Ben’s bad behavior. I liked the two men, and the woman, Malou Arcega, who was becoming a close friend.

Malou said, “The men must think you’re very conservative.” She spoke with calm. If she, who knew me best thought this was the natural course of things with American women—as a foreign sexual initiator—and as the pastor’s opinion of American women was low, then the town’s expectation of me seemed clear, as I was the first American woman it had had in a neighbor. 

The two men—Sixto and Ed—didn’t say a word, just stared, indicating they believed the same. No consideration was given to the notion that the men were out of line, but would a woman expect anything else ?

That’s why Sixto was sometimes skittish around me if we were ever alone outside the office. He wouldn’t share a double seat with me on a bus, but rather sat directly across the aisle. And it’s why when I walked after dinner, as dusk fell, 20-year-old boys, middle-aged men—my contemporaries, who should have known better—made gestures and called out to me, with what sounded like course comments in Tagalog.                        

The flower stalls were ahead offering a wealth of scent and I bought a bouquet. The bright purple anise hyssop’s stems and spiky leaves with licorice-mint smell caught my eye, but I moved on to the blue flax and chose them.

I emailed several women co-workers, who were located outside of Iba or on different islands, to learn what their experiences were with the Philippines’ discrimination against women.

Eve Bass, a smart, attractive woman, 60, and a special-education teacher in the Visayas, wrote back:

“The view here that everyone must be in a couple hides the reality. The crux is the loss of freedom for women to be independent. Self-determination isn’t a wise assumption to make, especially as a foreign woman. Men’s coarse words, the insistent matchmaking, and the errant Catholic Church enable the Philippines to maintain the status quo. I wasn’t aware that the consciousness in the demeaning remarks, and the treatment of women—as some kind of interactive toy—would be so personal. Women making themselves independent is vital for the future development of the Philippines.”

The market’s center, where merchants sold fish and meat, was popular and it had one entrance that extended along the outdoors. It pleased me to step inside this wet market and stand in the maze of aisles. Sunlight reflected on an array of fish sheen.

Crabs, lobsters—with their orangey-red bodies and strong tails—clams, tilapia, shrimp, oysters, scallops, grouper, tuna, tropical fishes, and seaweeds were abundant, low-cost, palate pleasing. Fresh-fish scents let me inhale the South China Sea’s fragrance, as the steady eyes of the catch stared. Green smells with hints of sand and oakmoss from the ocean meadows wafted.

Another friend in Brussels, Suzi Hagen, who’d worked internationally for American companies and had been in the Peace Corps, replied to my survey:

“You’ve learned hard truths about being a woman in a foreign country. Some cultures are worse than others, but women carry the burden. This is made harder by the behavior of too many of our male colleagues, who on the one hand are viewed as a ticket out by local women, and, on the other, view local women with little regard. Most men my age are married, so I have coffee or lunch or dinner occasionally with a male colleague, but have never found anyone on three continents to date.”

I came to the meat sellers who displayed chicken, beef, pork, goat, the odorless duck, and other poultry. The merchants bought dressed, wholesale cuts of meat, shank, rump, chuck, and brisket, and slit them to customer requests. This market was regulated and clean, routinely inspected. One of my DTI colleagues was a market inspector.    

The wet space gave off a mild moist smell, and floors drained rivulets of water and blood as fishmongers and butchers sliced portions, but this was no slaughterhouse. They hosed the floors to keep their stalls sanitary. I imagined the pastor’s lips curving up as I watched the water spiral down a drain.

There was as much pornography and as many prostituted women here as elsewhere. The videos I saw, promoting karaoke for evening relaxation at business conferences, featured lyrics flicking across the screen and scantily dressed white American women in a come-hither routine. None were Filipinas. If I’d seen these videos, the pastor had.

We aid workers had a training week every six months and outside our primary site. It became clear that when I left Iba for a first training, some business associates presumed I’d lied and was meeting a man. Ben and a hotel manager, a client, saw me enter at a next business meeting and approached me, eager to ask where I’d been. They knew I’d left town and spoke to each other in Tagalog, counting on my lack of understanding.

“Did she get married?” One said to the other, looking for a ring.

“Hardly,” I said. “I’ve been learning how to construct and install bio-sand filter water systems and taking progressively difficult oral Tagalog exams.”

American men here were often despicable, too. Weeks ago, as three male colleagues and I drove to a Manila trade fair, the radio aired a story about a Filipina’s testimony of being raped by a U.S. soldier. He’d violated the military’s rules of conduct and damaged a woman’s life, but was given a furtive exit from the islands to avoid prison.

Two of my colleagues were sure she’d been asking for it.

“She likely started it,” the third said.

“Oh, with her youth and petite stature opposite his tall, brawny build?” I shot back. “Women don’t want to be raped. Consider yourselves in a similar circumstance. You’re being forcibly sodomized by a man twice your body size. What would you feel as your clothes were yanked away, as his penis tore your skin?”

They were silent.                                       

“Manok?” a merchant questioned. Chicken in Tagalog. I knew this vendor and smiled.       

“Yes. Two pieces, please,” I said, designating each, she wrapped them.         

Beyond the fish and meat, the building’s interior broadened to an array of dry goods as I walked back to the open-air stalls lined up like row houses.

Stall owners hung bright green and blue tarps to screen the brilliant sun. The tarps were like awnings, accommodating merchants and customers. A thick wooden rod held up the outer end of each awning, while two free-hanging arms gripped the top.

Holding the flowers in one hand with my groceries on my shoulder, I wasn’t looking straight ahead and walked into a wooden rod, which smacked me in the forehead. Stunned, I stood still, massaging the wound as the Filipina merchant with her hair held by the silky lemon strip said, “You’re too tall.”

I laughed, despite the pain. She was right.

“And just after that pastor asked you if you’d been saved.” She wrinkled her nose and dismissively shook her head back and forth.

There was little privacy in the islands, but I was amused again and appreciative, as I savored her solidarity.

Originally published in passengersjournal.com. Volume 5, Issue 4, Winter 2024-2025.