And almost every day, stories about the abuses committed against house helpers are in the news. These helpers, who mostly don’t have formal schooling, come all the way from the far provinces just to seek better opportunity in the city. But alas, some of them end up with abusive employers who degrade them and treat them as slaves. But who’s the better person anyway?
As the leaves began to fall from our Sanggumay, I started to doubt the promise of the vendor at the Los Banos garden show. My cynicism grew proportionately with the number of leaves that kept falling to the ground. I felt so downhearted when all that was left of what was once a blossoming spray of green leaves was a hanging cluster of barren stems that barely showed any sign of life. I wanted to get rid of it but I chose to believe and did not give up.
My friends and I were laughing over how we people are never satisfied with ourselves. People with dark skin bleach themselves. The fair ones spend a lot of money on tanning lotions or go sunbathing. The rich have few children while the poor have dozens. When we have curly hair we have it straightened but once the hair is straight we again have it curled. I sometimes feel it is exhausting to be human because we are never satisfied with anything.
One day, when we were teenagers, our father asked my younger sister Rachel and me to go with him our mother to a birthday party of one of their friends.
Rachel did not want to go. I begged her to come with us. “There’d be only old people in that party. If you won’t come, I’ll have no one to talk to there,” I told her.
Rachel shrugged her shoulders and said, “What makes you think I’ll talk to you?” She was just kidding, but come to think of it, I’d feel awful if my sister would not want to talk to me.