My Family’s Slave

[Sanguine]

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.


The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/

Fascinating story.

[Smokin Joe]

Yes, it is.

[anubias]

Yes, it was.  Thank you for posting. 

I can't help but feel that Alex was rather cowardly to wait until his passing to publish this story, but I understand why he did.  The blowback would have been fierce.  I am glad that he was good to Lola in her remaining 12 years, but I can't help but feel anguished at the life the poor woman spent at the hands of his mother. 

[mountaineer]

We can't even imagine what it was like for that dear woman. 

[Oceander]

Some more of the article:

To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.

After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.

[Oceander]

Very interesting story.

[DB]

This story makes me ill to think about. I can't fathom the mindset that thinks owning another person is okay. That is what true evil looks like.

[Frank Cannon]

What a bunch of shitbags. Didn't this Commie writer realize that this woman was destroyed by his parents hands and not some odd curiosity to pimp an article out of?

[Smokin Joe]

What a bunch of shitbags. Didn't this Commie writer realize that this woman was destroyed by his parents hands and not some odd curiosity to pimp an article out of?

The article doesn't do him much good at this point. He's dead, Jim.

[Sighlass]

I knew she’d been sending almost all her money—my wife and I gave her $200 a week—to relatives back home.

“I’m not Dad. You’re not a slave here,” I said, and went through a long list of slavelike things she’d been doing. When I realized she was startled, I took a deep breath and cupped her face, that elfin face now looking at me searchingly. I kissed her forehead. “This is your house now,” I said. “You’re not here to serve us. You can relax, okay?”

No, the son tried to do right by her, even sending her back home to see if she wanted to stay. She didn't.

[anubias]

No, the son tried to do right by her, even sending her back home to see if she wanted to stay. She didn't.

After she was up in her seventies.  A bit late at that point, imo.  He had over 20 years as an adult to do something about it, but did not.  I understand keeping his mouth shut when she wasn't a citizen, but after she gained her citizenship under Reagan, it was time to let her go home as she could then safely leave the country without being arrested.  None of those kids had the decency to stand up to their disgusting excuse of a mother to do the right thing.

[libertybele]

After she was up in her seventies.  A bit late at that point, imo.  He had over 20 years as an adult to do something about it, but did not.  I understand keeping his mouth shut when she wasn't a citizen, but after she gained her citizenship under Reagan, it was time to let her go home as she could then safely leave the country without being arrested.  None of those kids had the decency to stand up to their disgusting excuse of a mother to do the right thing.

He did try to stand up to his parents on her behalf and later on he did send her home and she chose to come back.  She had been a slave for decades and knew no other life and her homeland and people she knew had changed drastically. Granted, the last 12 years of her life he gave her some happiness, decency and respect, but who knows what her life would have been had she not been a slave.  Would she have found love and raised a family of her own?

What the story doesn't reveal is how she became a 'gift' to his mother. How did his grandfather acquire her as a slave?  What were the circumstances? Perhaps her parents gave her up for money?  Perhaps if she had stayed in the Philippines she would have lived an impoverished life and if not a slave to his mother perhaps to someone else?

[Sighlass]

After she was up in her seventies.  A bit late at that point, imo.  He had over 20 years as an adult to do something about it, but did not.  I understand keeping his mouth shut when she wasn't a citizen, but after she gained her citizenship under Reagan, it was time to let her go home as she could then safely leave the country without being arrested.  None of those kids had the decency to stand up to their disgusting excuse of a mother to do the right thing.

Good solid points @anubias , he did try but was shamed by the mother and basically gave up. Rock and a hard place.

He did try to stand up to his parents on her behalf and later on he did send her home and she chose to come back.  She had been a slave for decades and knew no other life and her homeland and people she knew had changed drastically. Granted, the last 12 years of her life he gave her some happiness, decency and respect, but who knows what her life would have been had she not been a slave.  Would she have found love and raised a family of her own?

@libertybele Also good points. Institutionalized slavery. I do recall the article mentioning how she likely became a slave. That poor parents would sell a child often under the promises of a better life that never materialize. Then again, she could of stayed and starved to death also. Never know the turns in this life fully.