I Believe in the Invisible and Untold Stories

It was the social norm in Hong Kong for domestic helpers to assist with cooking, cleaning, and caring for children. I speak from experience: Auntie Nellie, my Filipino helper from my childhood, was practically my second mother. Whenever my parents would leave home for a night, Auntie Nellie was the one sitting in my room, her mere presence allowing me to sleep in the dark at night, or she was the one cooking Spam and egg fried rice, not quite, but ALMOST on par with my mum's.

 

However, this amount of love was never reciprocated. Whenever she told me to practice my Chinese, I'd hide behind the kitchen door, patiently waiting for her to walk by, just to jump scare her when the time came, because I knew she absolutely HATED being scared; a wicked "revenge tactic." There were hours where Auntie Nellie begged me to simply shower, and I'd ignore the request, glued to the screen, playing Minecraft. The climax was when I told my mum, for the thrill of it, that Auntie Nellie had been abusing me.

 

I'd never imagined that my despicable lie would get her fired.

 

And as she packed her things and left, she paused through the tears, only to tell me she was "sorry for being too hard" on the way out.

 

The evening on the same day, my parents sat me down on the living room couch, where I was told that Auntie Nellie's father had been secretly battling stage 4 brain cancer, and her son, who was about my age, had been so ill that he couldn't even attend school. This job, making below minimum wage, was a last-ditch effort, only to barely support her underprivileged and struggling family overseas in the Philippines.

 

The guilt was unlike anything I'd felt before. Auntie Nellie had loved me as a mother would, and I'd taken her so for granted that I failed to even consider the fact that she, too, was a human being.

 

A few weeks later, I took a walk, enjoying the intense view of towering skyscrapers made of pure glass complementing the bustling streets of businessmen in fancy suits hurrying to their next important meeting, where shrieking crosswalk signals and angry car horns filled the air, until my eyes shifted to the Queensway Bridge, where Hong Kong domestic helpers enjoy their day off every Sunday. Underneath the massive highway sat a horde of helpers, along a sea of cardboard mats, eating their pre-packed lunches, most of them on FaceTime with their families back home. It made me wonder: out of these hundreds of people, what other battles are they struggling to fight internally? What are the motives to have to work an underpaid job like being a helper? How many more "Auntie Nellies" sit among them?

 

I used to make excuses for my ignorance. Yet, whatever justification I could conceive of was never enough, as the fact of the matter is that Auntie Nellie still continued to treat me with the same amount of love, as if I were her own. And despite how badly I want to go back in time just to beat up my younger self, I've learned to look forward: to treat others with nothing short of respect and kindness, because, like Auntie Nellie, behind a face of warmth and comfort, you genuinely never know the invisible and untold stories people hide, and the internal, lifelong battles people are forced to fight, every single day.

 

This I believe.