My Family's Slave

The aim of a good story is not necessarily - very often, not at all - to tell you how to feel. It allows a spectrum of emotions based on the writing.

Not every story that covers subjects like these is going to have the "virtual courtroom" scene where the writer browbeats the subject or tries on psychology or, worse, tries on liberal bad boy morality and goes all Deadspin on the narrative: "The moral of this story? The fucking moral is fuck slavery and fuck my parents who had one and fuck me for letting them have one."

Here's where I have to write that slavery is wrong - it is wrong, it is wicked - because I don't want to get into a page of "Well, you sure didn't seem to think so." I do. I did not like anyone in the story, save Lola. She was treated horribly. But I don't need some comeuppance of the dead parents in order to accept why the story was written when it was and how it was. It isn't perfect, but to question the depth of reporting is...odd. Was the author supposed to go to some "expert" at the University of Washington and get a faux-sage quote about "people are contradictions?" When I read that story, I understand many thorny and yet unacceptable reasons why the parents had a slave.

 

Yeah. Sorry.

Avoiding shame as a cultural obligation doesn't excuse the author and his family any more than it absolves Joe Paterno, the Catholic Church, or the prestigious prep schools that swept child sex abuse under the rug.

Every culture tries to avoid bringing shame on the family (institution). Just because it's taken to a higher level in some Asian cultures doesn't mean I need to better "understand" your culture.

 

Oh, I agree. Just thought it was an interesting related take.

 

Really? OK. So, what were they?

(Preferably gotten from the parents, but if not, some other effort should be made to answer that question).

I believe some other poster made this exact point -- without being questioned, insulted or belittled, or called odd -- when they brought up how it sure would have been nice if other siblings -- particularly the older brother who seemed to be the one who was really clued in -- would have had a voice in the story, and why were they not interviewed or otherwise included? Or Lola's relatives, or someone willing to address these issues that everybody here is pretending they understand and don't need an explanation for. If you're going to write about such a big, tough topic, it seems that you ought to, yes, do some reporting.

I'm sorry, but the question of "why" is very often the most important part of good journalism, and, as I've said before, this was not addressed in any way, shape or form -- unacceptable, or not.

And before you all think the worst of me again: I'm particularly interested in this because one of my brothers married into a family of Filipino descent. So now, we all know, and love, a very large, very old and established -- both in the U.S. and in the Philippines -- group of family members that has certainly seemed normal, loving, and not wrapped up in any bad, even evil, "traditions." Many, many of them even came specially to participate in my brother's and his wife's wedding 20 or so years ago, which was a full-out Filipino-influenced affair.

But, what do I, or we, really know? This has actually made me wonder if they and their family has ever had such experiences as Tizon's did, and been just fine with it, like it's normal, and doesn't beg the question of why.

 

I don't believe it "excuses" anything. A woman curled up on a bed of laundry, sleeping from exhaustion, is a shocking image.

I am surprised, though, that some readers here require a supposedly missing moral code to approve of this story. It seems...unusual to me. It seems immature.

Adults there are bad people in the world often doing bad things, and here we have an astonishing look at slavery as it played out in the last 20th Century in America. And it lacks the appropriate amount of psychology and self-flagellation?

 

First, I don't think the worst of you. I think the easiest, safest position to take is the one you've taken.

Second, I think the why is all over that piece, especially implicitly. What kind of psychological motivation do you need? A Tommy Craggs-style "these fucking people were fucking assholes, so fuck em" kind of explanation? If the story had those words, would it fulfill what you're looking for, or do you need the story to, like I said, quote some neuroscientist who explains to us how these things work? Because, of course, we need neuroscientists now to explain obvious things like hatefulness, sin and wickedness.

The man who sells Lola into slavery kills himself. The author's mother is just like him "moody, imperial, secretly fragile." These are reasons, man. Weak, moody, imperial-acting people can do awful things when they have a little power over someone else. When people have power over others, they often abuse it. Why do parents abuse their kids? Why are people the way they are? We can unpack for 4000 different answers to that, or, the author can let the story unfold with his emotions and let readers draw their own conclusion.

I'd argue your conclusion isn't even a critique of the piece! I'd argue, in its own way, you're praising it - you desire to build more from it than is actually there, and, often times, that's not a sign of bad art/writing, but good! Most writing is too long and too involved and too caught up in "splaining" anyway.

To dwell here - on the why of evil - ignores the astonishing power of who Lola is in that family.

I feel like you miss the real story just to point out how wrong it all is, as if some people here can't see that.

 

How does one read this passage and think, there needs to be more of a "why" attached to this piece? How?

***
I said that Lola needed to see a dentist. She was in her 50s and had never been to one. I was attending college an hour away, and I brought it up again and again on my frequent trips home. A year went by, then two. Lola took aspirin every day for the pain, and her teeth looked like a crumbling Stonehenge. One night, after watching her chew bread on the side of her mouth that still had a few good molars, I lost it.

Mom and I argued into the night, each of us sobbing at different points. She said she was tired of working her fingers to the bone supporting everybody, and sick of her children always taking Lola’s side, and why didn’t we just take our goddamn Lola, she’d never wanted her in the first place, and she wished to God she hadn’t given birth to an arrogant, sanctimonious phony like me.

I let her words sink in. Then I came back at her, saying she would know all about being a phony, her whole life was a masquerade, and if she stopped feeling sorry for herself for one minute she’d see that Lola could barely eat because her goddamn teeth were rotting out of her goddamn head, and couldn’t she think of her just this once as a real person instead of a slave kept alive to serve her?

“A slave,” Mom said, weighing the word. “A slave?”

The night ended when she declared that I would never understand her relationship with Lola. Never. Her voice was so guttural and pained that thinking of it even now, so many years later, feels like a punch to the stomach. It’s a terrible thing to hate your own mother, and that night I did. The look in her eyes made clear that she felt the same way about me.

 

Tizon's grandfather was a monster.

His mother, a willful accomplice.

Tizon himself obviously realized he needed to ask absolution, and couldn't really figure out how to do it.

By the time he himself became responsible for Lola, she was in her 60s with few skills or resources. Apparently her relatives back home were neither able or willing to take her in.

What was he supposed to do, say "you're free" and send her out the door?

Brooks Hatlen.

 

The worst stories—whether written or told—tell their audiences what to think.

 

Offering up another human being to take punishment for her lie edges the mom a little past "willful accomplice" in my book.

 

Well, it wasn't her idea in the first place, and she didn't make the arrangements. But she certainly saw that it was carried on.

Nobody's clean in the whole family. Alex Tizon and his siblings realized the whole thing was wrong, and in the end "freed" Lola, but by that time there was nothing they could do that would have brought "justice."