Her Story
Remembering the days I spent with a special person in my childhood
Before I turned 12, I have always lived with my parents — that was before I left to study in Singapore and lived in a boarding school. My parents were working full-time even when my brother and I were young, which necessitated the hiring of a househelper. Due to the then low cost and lack of bureaucratic hurdles, it was rather common for Malaysian households to source househelpers from surrounding ASEAN countries, namely the Philippines and Indonesia.
I did not remember much — and neither could I recall in which year it actually happened. My parents went through the usual routine of going through portfolios of different househelpers, assembled by a maid agency who has sourced them out.
I have always detested and discouraged the use of the word “maid”, explaining why I have placed emphasis of the said term. It reminds me of the low socio-economic factors of people who slaved away as domestic helpers in the olden days, and the very term itself carries the same negative connotations. I will strictly refer to her as our housekeeper, or househelper hereon.
Welcome, and here is your place
All I could recollect is her composure the day she arrived with us. My mom drove to the agency, picked her up and brought her home. She was timid, quiet and did not look us into the eyes. She could easily disappear into a corner, I thought.
My mom introduced her to the rules and regulations of our place, where her accommodation was (it was merely a folded mattress that could be conveniently stowed away on the top of the cupboard in the study room). She was to eat separately from us at the dining table, after she had served us our meals. She was to use her own utensils.
As a kid I never knew the implications of such segregation in the household. Over the years I grew up to not only realize that my parents were probably unaware of how psychologically demeaning the said segregation was, but also to come to a decision I will never ever treat a human being as less than equal of who I am.
I feel ashamed reading what I have penned so far. How does this kind of practice set us apart from the slavery story that the world has witnessed over the course of human history, scattered over so many different continents? The Americas, the Pacific islands, Australia, Europe and more.
Just because she came from a less privileged background, does that mean that we should treat her differently? Does that validate our way of separating ourselves from her, instructing that she shall not dine with us at the same table, that she should use dining cutleries that were exclusively set aside for her?
To think of it, my parents didn’t commit the worst of all crimes. They provided her clothing, bedding, toiletries, food, water, medication, partial access to healthcare (my mom tend to encourage her to self medicate until things “go out of control”, although we never had to come to the latter)…
…but she had no day-offs. She was working with us 7 days a week, 12— 16 hours a day. The only time she got to leave the home was when we would bring her out with us for an occasional dinner, for shopping trips and etc. Or when my mom needed her help when we visit our grandparents, where she would work with my grandparents’ househelper and take care of us, too.
The first night, she cried
We had our usual dinner, and my mom showed her some cooking tricks in the kitchen — a way of passing down her recipe and ensuring that our housekeepers make food that our palates agree with. I did not learn about this until months, or even years later, when my mom and I talked about her.
That she cried on her first night, when she was eating her dinner, crouching in the corner of the wet kitchen.
It was not because she felt abused, misappropriated, ashamed or homesick. She was crying because we had made a dish based on chicken that night. It turned out that she came from a family so poor that she could only afford chicken on very special occasions, perhaps twice or thrice a year.
Her family can only afford to have
a few meals with chicken every year.
I was taken aback. Horror and incredulity would be the words that I would say are apt descriptions of how I felt. Growing up under the protective cover of my parents, I have not seen the side of the world where my househelper hailed from. Chicken is considered very affordable to us, barely a luxury but more of a necessity. Otherwise, there’s always pork, beef, fish or crustaceans in place of chicken.
“It’s a quarter past one!”
Her initial arrival was more problematic that my parents have figured. She could clean, cook, iron and wash well, just like any other housekeeper was taught and trained at the agency. But there was a little hitch. She couldn’t read time off a clock, much to my parents’ annoyance (and probably disbelief, too).
To a middle-income family whose members and its social circle population are all well-educated, my mom simply could not fathom someone not being able to read time off a clock.
My mom fashioned a makeshift clock from paper and pins. She taught her how to read time from this paper clock, and quizzing her when she sets the hands of the clock to a different time. I could vividly remember my mom heaving a sigh of disbelief for the first few days when she tried so painstakingly to get her read the right time.
“It’s a quarter past one!” My mom would yell so loudly I could hear her pained exasperation from the living room. “Why are you stupid?!”
Departure
Bad news struck after we sent her to a mandatory annual medical examination. It turned out that she contracted pneumonia before working with us. As far as the government and the law concerned, a person infected with pneumonia before, regardless of their current health status, length of stay in the country and the likes, is a healthrisk and have to be removed from the country.
In other words, we are losing her. She will be deported from Malaysia back to Indonesia.
I remember when my parents broke the news to her, she collapsed on the floor in a puddle of tears. She didn’t want to go home, and she wanted to stay and work with us. My parents had to tell her that they had no say over her deportation — it was a government directive, not sanction by the employers themselves — and that they have wished she would stay.
My mom was absolutely livid at the thought of sending her away. She had passed so many meal recipes to her so that my mom no longer needed to supervise our housekeeper when she made our meals. She even taught her how to read faces from the clock. In her eyes, it was an investment that never came to fruition.
To me, it meant losing a housekeeper that I would affectionately address as kakak, the Malay/Indonesian equivalent for the word “sister” (in a sibling sense). She was the one who found the missing Lego piece for my playtime masterwork; the one who would whip up a quick meal late at night if my brother or I were feeling snackish; the one who I would talk with when she was preparing meals for us; the one who I would sometimes help her out with basic chores (like putting out the laundry to dry); the one who passed me a dry, clean towel in the event that I have forgotten to bring one with me to the shower.
My mom was my educator of my life. She taught me how to read, write, speak; she taught me how to dress, carry and behave myself. But my housekeeper was the one who took care of all the small little things that my mom, a full-time kindergarten teacher, did not have time for.
She taught me that not having much
is so much more than nothing.
More importantly, after so many years down the road, she is the earliest memory with me that taught me to be humble. Who showed me that the world is far from equal, who told me stories of how life was markedly different in her hometown in Indonesia.
The day she had to leave came. I remember cowering at the top of the staircase, as my parents drove her and a small luggage of her worldly belongings off to the airport. My housekeeper was crying, pleading to stay. There was nothing my parents could do — the law is written in stone. It was not written to be broken.
Up till today, I still miss her a lot. I did not hear about her from the day my parents put her in our family car, backed out of the driveway. My last memory of her was seeing her dejected, tearful face in the backseat as the gate closed.
She must have borrowed a lot of money, probably through illegal moneylenders who charge exorbitant interest rates, in order to secure a housekeeping job in Malaysia. She came here so that the meazly pay of 300 Malaysian Ringgit a month (~93USD), enormous when converted into the Indonesian Rupiah,could not only pay off the interest for the loan she took out, but also promise a better education, living conditions and future for her children.
It all ended with a scar from a pneumonia infection she had, years ago. One scar, and a family’s dream is shattered.
We could have been better
I am not writing this entry to belittle my parents for how they treated our housekeepers. There were many reasons why, and I have chosen not to dwell into them in this piece of writing — they don’t have a place here. In addition, my parents were treating our househelpers just like how members of their social circle treat theirs. They don’t see anything wrong with it. As long as they are not physically abusing them, it’s alright. That mindset sounded very fair back then, but is unacceptable to me today.
We have cycled through a handful of housekeepers. Some of them never finished the two-year stint stipulated in the contract, terminated due to unsatisfactory performance. One even absconded the night before her second month with us.
But I know that we could have been better. Growing up in Singapore with an open mind and moving to Europe really changed how I see things. I learned not only to be compassionate and empathetic, but also to treat people the way I wished to be treated. I see everyone as equal. We are humans, after all, made up with the same chemical composition, sharing up to 99.9% of our genetic material. Why would we let socioeconomic factors influence how we treat each other? That thought alone puzzles me greatly, and disturbs me ever so deeply.
Dear housekeeper, I hope you are well. I am sorry, and I am thankful of all the things you have done for us.
Ending note: Changing times
I am glad that some policies are changing the landscape of the housekeeping industry in Malaysia — that from 2017 onwards, live-in housekeepers will be a thing of the past to prevent abuse. The pay for live-in housekeepers has also been raised over the years, partly due to inflation as well as pressure from the Indonesian government, to safeguard the well-being of the housekeepers. There is still a lot more to be done to educate Malaysian households about how we should treat a housekeeper as an equal, but it’s a good step in the right direction.
Housekeepers from all parts of ASEAN have undeniably played an incredibly important, despite largely silenced and unappreciated, role in the Malaysian society. The problem with Malaysia is that the way of how live-in househelpers were treated is deeply ingrained our culture. That we were used to paying them a pittance and yet expect them to do all the heavy-lifting in the household. The legacy of abuse and underpayment continues, and it is up to the younger generation, people like me who have observed members of the previous generation, to shake things up. To change things, and make sure that househelpers get treated decently and more importantly, equally.
They are humans. Just like us.
Thank you, housekeepers.
