the help

Wikipedia says Kathryn Stockett's book, The Help, is her first novel, took her 5 years to finish, and was rejected by 60 literary agents before someone took a chance. It has sold 5 million copies and has stayed in the New York Times Bestseller List for more than 100 weeks.

The story is set in the 1960s, but it has made me ask the same question: how does the household help feel? If my own nanny got a chance to write her story, would I be ashamed of what I would read about me?

I saw myself in Elizabeth Leefolt, who loved her children but was so distracted by things like her social standing, her friends' opinions, her activities in the League, and her sewing, that she does not know how to love her children. It's not so different from your usual working mom these days, only they're so exhausted they don't have the energy to patiently love their children. Try drawing eighteen pigs for a 4-year-old at 11pm.

I have my own Aibileen. She's the great Ate Malou, who deserves a dozen blogs for her exploits. She came to us when my older daughter was two years old; my daughter is now eleven, and I have another daughter, The Impossible 4-Year-Old.

Ate Malou is so efficient, I have let her take over the household. She's the one who says my Christmas decor is tacky, and instructs me to buy two dozen additional gold balls for the Christmas tree. She buys my daughters new underwear because she says I'd remember to do it only when they're too small to wear or they're so frayed they're falling down the girls' knees. On that note, she also gets to remind me when my husband needs new boxers, because she does the laundry and knows all these things. She's a great cook, and we don't need an occasion to have rellenong bangus for breakfast.

She's the one my daughters run to when they suffer some hurt, whether real or imagined. When my father died, we left the children with her so we could attend to the funeral arrangements. She called us just before the procession got to the cemetery. My younger daughter, then seven months old, had started vomiting. We were six hours away. She had brought the baby to the hospital, bought oral rehydration salts, brought the baby home and gave her medicines, BEFORE she panicked and called us.

I don't remember ever asking her how she feels, and I don't remember ever telling her how much I appreciate her. I'm lucky to have her; hell, she's the one who bought a brand-new sala set with her money when we moved to a new house, because my mother-in-law was visiting and the house was so bare we looked poor. We were poor, but damned if she'd let anyone say so. She scolds me when I let the 4-year-old run around in the garage with her hair down, barefoot, saying the child looks like a pulubi. I suspect she doesn't want the child's appearance reflect on her. With her, the little girl always goes out in a dress, with slippers in a matching color, and perfectly tied hair ribbons, even if it's just to the neighborhood sari-sari store to buy a chicken cube.


These days having household help is not a privilege but a necessity, if you're a working parent.  We've had all those sad stories of nannies hurting kids, maids who steal, and maids who burn down the kitchen trying to boil water.  But there are those rare women who could cook up a feast and love your kids as much as you do.  You pay them, but you never tell them they are loved too.  Maybe sometimes you should.  Because sometimes, the little people in your life are the ones who make the biggest impact.