keep those beneath you in their place,
for their own good and the good of the
household. They will love you for help-
ing them to be what God intended.
My brother Arthur was born in- I came next, followed by three
more siblings: Albert, Ling, and Maria.
While Lola looked after us, my parents
went to school and earned degrees.
Then the big break: Dad was of-
fered a job in foreign affairs. The sal-
ary would be meager, but the position
was in America—a place he and Mom
had grown up dreaming of.
Dad was allowed to bring his fam-
ily and one domestic. Lola was terri-
fied, she told me years later. “It was
too far,” she said. “Maybe your mom
and dad won’t let me go home.” What
convinced her was my father’s prom-
ise that things would be different in
America. He told her that as soon as
he and Mom got on their feet, they’d
give her an “allowance.” Lola could
send money home. Her parents lived
in a hut with a dirt floor. Lola could
build them a concrete house.
We landed in Los Angeles on May 12,- I was four years old—too young
to question Lola’s place in our family.
But as my siblings and I grew up, we
came to see the world differently.L
ola never got that allowance.
She asked my parents about it
when her mother fell ill with dys-
entery and her family couldn’t afford the
medicine she needed. “How could you
even ask?” Dad said. “You see how hard
up we are. Don’t you have any shame?”
My father was transferred to the
Philippine consulate in Seattle. He
took a second job cleaning trailers,
and a third as a debt collector. Mom
got work as a medical technician. We
barely saw them.
Mom would come home and up-
braid Lola for not cleaning the house
well enough or for forgetting to bring
in the mail. “Didn’t I tell you I want
the letters here when I come home?”
she would say, her voice venomous.
“An idiot could remember.” Some-
times my parents would team up until
Lola broke down crying.
When guests came over, my parents
would ignore Lola, or, if questioned,
lie and quickly change the subject.
We lived across the street from the
Misslers, a rambunctious family of
eight. “Who’s that little lady you keep
in the kitchen?” Big Jim, the patri-
arch, once asked. A relative from back
home, Dad said. Very shy.
Billy Missler, my best friend, didn’t
buy it. “Why is she always working?” he
once asked me.MOM WOULD COME
HOME AND UPBRAID
LOLA FOR NOT
CLEANING THE HOUSE
WELL ENOUGH.94 february 2019
Reader’s Digest